And it's one of the beautiful things and most rewarding parts of being a Snowbird is to see the inspiration that you give these young kids and indeed their parents right across the

country.

Maryse Carmichael, former commanding officer and pilot with the Snowbirds.

It started when I was about eight or nine years old, a little girl.

My parents took my three brothers and I to the Bagotville International Air Show.

I don't remember the drive up or the drive back, but I remember a couple acts of that air show.

It was really the first time I saw a formation flying in aerobatics, but I saw the snowbirds there.

Maurice, did you at some point decide, I'm going to know all the right steps and become a snowbird?

For sure

... as a pilot, typically preparing for the day, you arrive two and a half, three hours before the show, depending on the show site.

And typically on show days, it is reserved for strictly that.

So a lot of the public appearances will happen the day prior, and interviews with the media, but certainly there will be, uh, very little before a performance.

Before every mission, there's a briefing, uh, for the pilots, and typically the briefing will be about 30 to 40 minutes.

Following the briefing, the, all pilots will meet with the technicians, go over the airplane, and if there's any work that was done and all that, and then go ahead with the performance.

Following the performance is probably an hour and a half, maybe two hours of signing autographs, a full debrief, uh, which will include watching the performance that they just flew on a tape and analyzing the errors.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs] Nice.

[laughs] 19- 1992.

So, you know, for those of you that have been to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in the middle of winter, it's not always pleasant, but you know what? It doesn't matter.

I was so excited because I knew I was coming to Moose Jaw.

I was gonna fly the Tutor starting in January, so it was all really exciting.

The one thing, though, and again, it was still the early days of having, uh, girls and women fly, uh, in the military, and I arrived with one of my course mates that we drove from Ontario together to Moose Jaw, and of course, when we go to get our keys, uh, for the barracks, he's in one barrack and I'm in the other one.

And I'm like, "Okay, sure, maybe there's, maybe there's all kinds of students in different barracks." So I thought, "No problem." So then I get to my barrack and it's, uh, the second floor of the hospital, and of course it's just women that are there.

What can you tell us about that experience?

So

that's really their mission.

But when you take the Snowbirds, nine airplanes in tight formation, we're talking about two meters from wingtip to wingtip.

At 300 feet from the ground, 450 kilometers an hour, doing some dynamic aerobatics at that altitude, it takes a specific set of skills that actually has been acquired now for over the last 55 years.

The snowbirds have been around for 55 years.

We've learned a number of lessons.

We understand what it takes to fly this large formation low to the ground.

What are you asking Canadians to do? Because this does sound like a fait accompli here that the government has made this call.

really

happy and grateful that the Canadian government has now made the decision to move to a different platform.

The Tudor is 63 years old.

It's been flown by the Snowbirds for 55 years.

I mean, this moment was inevitable.

We knew the Snowbirds would have to transition to the new plane.

So that's wonderful news.

Have you received any reaction or response?

They don't make these parts anymore, and we don't have, uh, we don't have enough runway to get these to when we get the new planes," pun intended.

[laughs] And absolutely.

I mean, the planes are 63 years old.

The Snowbirds have been flying them for 55 years.

We knew this was coming.

And, uh, you know what? What you mentioned right at the beginning of the introduction, that was me.

I was that little kid at the Bagotville International Air Show in the late '70s, and I saw the nine red and white jets in the sky-

So what the heck's going on here?

They should've been, they should've been attended to earlier?

Well, either, uh, selecting differently or perhaps even changing somewhat the, uh, the show that the Snowbirds fly.

They currently fly with nine airplanes in full aerobatic for over 30 minutes.

Perhaps during the transition they could have scaled down the show.

But, uh, really pausing the Snowbirds, uh, is a loss, is a great loss to a national institution for Canada, a source of, of inspiration for Canadians, and more importantly and of concern to me is the loss of the operational expertise.

You know, once you stop, uh, performing, um, this...

You know, this expertise just doesn't go on a shelf-

What do you know about that plane? How do you feel about that becoming the new Snowbird?