TRAILBLAZER AT MACH 1.5
First female F18 pilot
Deanna “Dee” Brasseur recalls being 11 or 12 and riding her bicycle to the end of a runway at the RCAF base in Centralia, near London, Ont., where her father was posted, and endlessly watching the Chipmunk trainer airplanes take off and land. There, she thought, would I go, too, if only I could.
But she couldn’t. In the mid1960s, the Canadian Forces didn’t permit women to be pilots.
“I used to watch for hours and hours and hours, and I specifically remember … I could go back to that spot today and look up and see these Chipmunks coming over, and think to myself, ‘Boys are so lucky that they get to do that.’ ”
Which makes this weekend all the more special for Brasseur. On Saturday, the Ottawa native is being presented a Pioneer Award from the Northern Lights Aero Foundation, a not-for-profit organization devoted to encouraging women’s participation in aerospace and aviation. Brasseur is being honoured for breaking a glass ceiling at Mach 1.5 and becoming not just among the country’s first female military pilots, but its very first fighter pilot when, nearly 30 years ago, she took the controls of a CF-18 Hornet.
The Pioneer Award, she says, is dearer to her than the Order of Canada she received in 1998. “This one is from my peers.”
Brasseur joined the Canadian Forces in 1972, when her family was stationed at CFB Penhold in Alberta. She applied to become a Physical Education and Recreation Officer, but learned that that, too, was a man’s job. “When I joined, there were 95,000 members of the Forces, and the number of women was capped at 1,500.” She was asked if she wanted instead to work in nursing or a pharmacy, which she declined.
But after a summer lifeguarding, she signed up, taking basic training at CFB Cornwallis in Nova Scotia, after which she was assigned the trade of administration clerk. “I was a typist,” she says.
After two weeks in the dental office of the Winnipeg base, she decided enough was enough. She’d heard that the RCMP was opening its ranks to women, and she thought she might give that a shot. But her father convinced her instead to apply for the Officer Candidate Training Plan.
Timing was on her side. In 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada recommended lifting the cap of 1,500 servicewomen and opening up more trades to women. Brasseur was accepted to the program and posted to North Bay as an Air Weapons Controller.
In 1979, as part of a program integrating women into traditionally male roles, she was accepted into a pilot training course, and on Feb. 13, 1981, she, along with Captains Nora Bottomley and Leah Mosher, received her wings. Brasseur was granted her request to become a flight instructor in Moose Jaw. After Minister of Defence Perrin Beatty announced in 1987 that all military roles, including combat ones, should be open to women, Brasseur wrote a memo to her career officer indicating her interest in flying fighter jets, which she was granted in June 1988, along with Capt. Jane Foster. A year later, they became not just Canada’s first female fighter pilots, but the first, anywhere, since the Second World War, when Russian women flew fighters in combat.
“We didn’t know that we were the first women fighter pilots. I went flying because I wanted to fly, not to prove anything to anybody, for any reason. It was just an exciting opportunity.”
As one of the first women breaking into a male-dominated field — one long associated with oozing machismo — Brasseur’s trail was at times extremely difficult. In 1998, following the publication of a Maclean’s magazine cover story on sexual abuse in the Forces, Brasseur came forward with her own account of rape and sexual harassment.
“You come up against a stereotype wall that’s always going to be there,” she says. “I had a very small peer group: me, myself and I. It was hard, and there were times when it was lonely, and I wish it hadn’t been so hard. I wish it had been more fun.
“Sometimes you got used to it, sometimes you got tired of it, sometimes you got frustrated and sometimes you just accepted it. As a woman coming up in the military when I did, you were considered one of two things: you were either easy or you were gay. That was the time, and guys were guys. If I had as much sex as it was rumoured I had, I wouldn’t be able to stand.
“The challenge,” she adds, “is to look at yourself in the mirror and say: ‘You did everything they’ve done. You’re as good as they are. Accepting yourself is the No. 1 priority, and over time they forget about the fact that you’re a woman. You’re just another squadron pilot who happens to be competent and capable.’ ”
She never did fly in combat. The first opportunity would have been in 1991 in the first Gulf War, when, at 38, she was stationed at the Directorate of Flight Safety in Ottawa. “It would have been the icing on the cake, but 99 per cent of pilots these days have not, and one of the reasons you’re in the military is to keep the peace, so I figure we were having a pretty successful go of it until then.”
Despite her pioneering efforts, female fighter pilots are still a rare breed. “Jane and I opened the door in 1989, but when we looked behind us, where is everyone?” She holds up an open hand. “Since 1989, that’s how many women fighter pilots there have been — five. And that includes me and Jane.”
These days, she does some inspirational speaking, and recently started working part-time at an Ottawa pet store where she’s been a longtime customer. She also, following 9/11, joined the Reserves, where she stayed for a dozen years.
More recently, Brasseur founded the One in a Million Project, established under the Community Foundation of Ottawa. The group raises funds for organizations that support research, education and treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, including Wounded Warriors, Invictus Games and the Military Families Fund.
Visit oneinamillionunlimited.com for more information.