Blair's Blog

Women in Aviation, International. Brenda has been involved with the Calgary chapter of the Canadian branch of Women in Aviation for several years, currently as the chapter president. Women in Aviation is a really great organization of individuals that supports and encourages women to consider being part of the aviation world – whether at the level of individual interest or as a career. The Calgary chapter is a super friendly group and includes private and commercial pilots, aircraft maintenance specialists, authors, students, instructors, aircrew, airport staff and those who just have an interest and enthusiasm for all things flying.

A month ago, the chapter hosted the day event at the Mount Royal University’ s aviation program hanger at Springbank airport. This event is coordinated around the world with international WAI chapters to occur on the same day – 24 Sept this year. About 75 chapter events were held in 10 countries from Canada to Switzerland and Australia to Zambia. The Calgary event was attended by well over 100 girls who got to chat to women with aviation interest and careers.

Another benefit of the group is that they have developed a good relationship with all sorts of groups and businesses in the aviation sector and are able to get group tours of some really interesting facilities and places. Over the past couple of years there have been tours of the new tower at YYC, Viking’s Twin Otter production facility, the YYC airside equipment center, and just this past week, the Airport Firehall. The group always opens up these types of tours to the families of the members – the joke has become that if there are trucks or food the guys start showing up!

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It’s difficult to believe that autumn began this week. It has been quite the roller coaster of a year. The economy generally has been difficult here and the job market has been abysmal – the worst employment market in 30 years, some say. Even this week, two individuals that I know were let go from their companies.

In some good news for us, though, both Brenda and I landed jobs in September, which was an incredible relief after months of scrambling for small contracts and juggling finances to keep the bills paid and food on the table. Brenda is going to be working in the information booths at the Calgary Airport that provide all manner of assistance to travelers going through the airport. This month and next are largely focused on training and getting oriented to the new international terminal building that will be opening for use at the end of October after about 6 years of construction. One of Brenda’s current responsibilities is to guide groups of airport staff on familiarization tours through the new terminal.

I was fortunate enough to bring my “unpaid vacation” to an end after 352 days off – I started on a contract with an oil company downtown just this past week. I will be reviewing the operational policies and procedures over the next 12 months and updating them where needed to improve the effectiveness of the processes and to help ensure that all of the requirements of the business and industry regulators are being met.

In the midst of all this change for Brenda and I, of course there is all the hectic back-to-school activity with the kids – it’s not to bad for the boys, as their situations and routines are very similar to last year. However, one of the sacrifices that had to be made with the lack of employment was that we had to withdraw Alyssa from her school – this year she is doing Grade 9 through a distance learning program – her classes are on-line each morning and she works independently on her assignments in the afternoons. So far, that has been working well for her.

All in all, September has been pretty eventful and, finally, in a good way.

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… for a day.

It’s not like I can even afford to ride my own bike this year with almost a year of unemployment. However, this bike, which belongs to my friend Mark, was needing a ride home. It had been in the shop for quite a few weeks getting some clutch work done and when it was ready, Mark asked if I would be willing to ride it up to Sundre for him.

I picked it up on Friday, then yesterday I rode up in the morning to drop it off. I took some back roads that I had never traveled on previously – some nice scenic secondaries up through Water Valley. In a slightly disappointing turn of events, almost all of the roads were paved, so I only managed to try out a little bit of gravel. On the other hand, I learned about some nice routes for next year’s riding.

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Or is that weakly?

Mid-May we decided that it would be a good idea to join an urban walking club and see parts of the city that we weren’t familiar with and get a little bit of fresh air and exercise. Besides moping about the house engaging in the never-ending job search is wearing. A regular Tuesday morning outing sounded pretty enticing.

Brenda went on the first walk two weeks ago without me, as I had a phone interview. It was convenient, starting in Elbow Park not far from our place, and went through familiar areas – Britannia and over to Heritage Park. Turned out to be about 8km (plus another 1.5 to get to the meeting point) and to add insult to (near) injury all of the other participants (who are retired by choice, unlike us…) seem to be able to keep up a furious pace rather effortlessly.

Last week we were both occupied (this time Brenda had an interview) and so we missed the walk along the Bow River and through Prince’s Island. This week, though, we were both available and met up with the group in the Bowness area near the north end of Home Road. From there we did a 8.5 km walk along the escarpment on the east side of the Bow all the way up to Silver Springs. Not the community (well, that too), but the actual springs for which the community was named. I never even knew that the springs existed. It was a pretty fine day – warm with a clear sky and, having been doing a little bit of extra walking (and some stretching) we managed to keep up just fine.

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