Snowbirds aiming to Inspire

The Snowbirds are doing lowlevel flights over Canadian cities to boost citizen morale during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we’ll have to wait and see if the jets appear over the Okanagan

The mission, dubbed Operation Inspiration, began in the Maritimes last weekend and is working its way west. The distinctive red-and-white jets, trailing white smoke, are flying in a nine-plane formation as low as 500 feet above the ground.

On Friday, the Snowbirds were in Kingston, Ont. But full details of their itinerary are not being released due to weather considerations.

On Twitter, the Snowbirds team wrote: “We will be updating day-byday in order to account for the inevitable Mother Nature interference. So we don’t want to commit to dates in specific places more than a day in advance. It’s not you, meteorologists. It’s us.”

Premier Justin Trudeau announced the Snowbird tour during one of his daily COVID-19 updates in late April.

“As we watch the Snowbirds fly over our homes, let’s remember that we are all in this together,” Trudeau said at the press conference.

Some social media users have criticized the undertaking, doubting its usefulness and questioning its cost as the pandemic goes on with people getting sick and dying.

The Snowbirds, who are based at CFB Moose Jaw, again responded cheekily on Twitter: “We would be flying regardless. Now we’re just spreading the love (from a distance of course) instead of saying hello to the same farmers around Moose Jaw.”

While the Snowbirds’ B.C. schedule is currently unknown, they do seem to have an affinity for Kelowna and Penticton. The aerial demonstration team performs in one city or the other almost every year.

“Kelowna is a great place to go in the summer,” Capt. Thomas Edelson, then the Snowbirds’ public affairs officer, told an interviewer in 2014. “It’s a little tight and the mountains present a unique challenge because at the speeds the planes fly, the horizon can come at you pretty quick.

“(And) it’s certainly one of the more beautiful spots to have a show,” he said.

“We would be flying regardless. Now we’re just spreading the love (from a distance of course) instead of saying hello to the same farmers around Moose Jaw.” —Snowbirds on Twitter

The Canadian Press The Canadian Armed Forces aerobatic team, the Snowbirds, flies over Halifax last Sunday. The team is flying across Canada in what it calls “Operation Inspiration.”