Centennial Of The RCAF

 Close to where I was yesterday is another summer tradition. Each year on Plaza Bridge, the government chooses a different theme in Canadian history and society to be featured in a series of displays. This year is the centennial of the founding of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and so this is the theme.

The RCAF got its start after the First World War, in which young Canadian pilots fought largely in the British Royal Flying Corps. The early years of the organization were about civil air operations, patrols, and tracking smuggling in the vastness of the Canadian landscape.

The RCAF took part in exploration expeditions in the far north.

And there was an emphasis in those years on mapping the country in detail.

When the Second World War broke out, Canada became home to the British Commonwealth Air Training Program, where new pilots from multiple countries learned how to fly on airfields across the country. Franklin Roosevelt would call the country the aerodrome of democracy.

Canadian pilots fought throughout the war in Europe, starting during the Battle of Britain.

Dr. Albert Ross Tilley was a surgeon attached to the RCAF, whose innovations on burn treatment and plastic surgery has left a big impact on patient treatment around the world.

Wilbur Franks, an RCAF researcher at the University of Toronto, designed a flight suit to counter gravitational forces encountered by pilots operating at high speed.

Canadian air crews took part in the air drops late in the war of food to the starving people of the Netherlands.

Canada also is a founding member of NATO, and during the Cold War and afterwards has participated in multiple operations as part of the agreement.

Canadian women were heavily involved in support positions during the Second World War in the RCAF, and later became military pilots in their own right.