Dancer has jet propulsion
University of Waterloo student launches local chapter of Women in Aviation
BRESLAU — Jodie Scarrow is a trained ballet dancer.
She’s also a commercial pilot in training.
Grand jeté, today. Big jets, tomorrow.
“I love being up high,” said Scarrow, the 20-year-old co-captain of the University of Waterloo dance team.
Flight is the wild-blue fancy of the third-year aviation student, who earned her private pilot’s licence last fall. Taking off is a trademark manoeuver in bare feet, soft slippers or pilot’s wings for the young Millgrove woman, who was raised in the cramped cockpit-sized town between Cambridge and Hamilton.
A gentle plié landing is her big finish, on raked stage or flat runway.
“I love jumping,” said Scarrow, who counts herself only 20 hours shy of the 250 hours of flying time needed to claim her commercial pilot’s licence, after four years of university.
“That’s kind of my best dance feature. That’s kind of my best thing. I love being off the ground.”
On Friday evening Scarrow will officially launch the new University of Waterloo chapter of Women in Aviation at the Waterloo Wellington Flight Centre, where Waterloo’s aviation students train at the regional airport. International Women’s Day will be celebrated a week early.
She’ll be president of the 14-member Winged Warriors.
On Saturday, she’ll lead the school dance team into a competition in Brampton. The name she picked for her solo routine?
“You can practically see it from here.” That title echoes a line from the Second World War flick “Dunkirk,” which features dizzying aerial battles.
“I love that movie,” she said. “So many Spitfires.”
Dancing or flying, she aims to soar and score high.
“She’s a little human dynamo,” flight centre general manager Bob Connors said. “She’s a great kid.”
Scarrow was two when she started dance in Waterdown. She had a Russian ballet teacher once. Technique was taught, repetition ordered.
“A lot of flying is physical repetition,” she said. “If you’re learning to do a certain manoeuver, you do it like this. That’s similar to ballet.”
Scarrow was 11 or 12 when her mom, Jill, a nurse, sent her to summer camp at Hamilton’s Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum for a week.
“I never really got into it,” Scarrow recalled. “I didn’t see anyone who was female there. I was the only girl.”
Scarrow is not the only girl earning her wings at Waterloo. There are 40 aviation students in her year, she says. Eight — or 20 per cent — are women.
“Not a bad average,” Connors said. “The percentage of women who are pilots is somewhere between six and eight per cent worldwide, including Canada. Women just generally don’t come into flying careers in the same proportion as other occupations.”
Now may be a good time for that to change. There are jobs to be had, with Canadian airlines saying they are looking to hire about 1,000 commercial pilots this year.
“The labour market is absolutely redhot,” Connors said. “The pilot shortage is being felt by every aspect of the flying industry, so the opportunities for young people coming out are nothing short of phenomenal.”
Luckily for Scarrow, her father ,Gary, got his private pilot’s licence when she was in high school. Dad, who owns a kitchen contracting business in Oakville, took her up for a flight in a small plane. “That sparked my interest,” she said. A visit to Calgary last June for the Canadian Women in Aviation conference, with six other female aviation students, provided the spark for Scarrow to set up the Winged Warriors chapter in Waterloo.
“It was so inspiring, because it was with women in the military, women who fly massive airplanes for Air Canada. Women from Porter just starting their careers, flight instructors — every facet of the industry any of us were interested in,” she said.
“I wanted to bring that back to the flight centre and share it with some of the first years, because we really don’t have something like that.”
Now, they do. Scarrow will officially launch the chapter on Friday night at 7. She is the founder. The next day, she’ll dance for Waterloo.
She can already leap through the air. She can fly planes that land on water and have more than one engine. She can fly at night. After school is done, she aims to fly on instruments, among the clouds.
“Everything seems to be taking off,” she said.