By Cheryl Jahn

RCAF celebrates 100 years

Nov 7, 2024 | 3:08 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “The national thing at that time was men of the Army, boys of the Navy, gentlemen of the Air Force,” says Ken Pendergast, veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

It is the 100th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, a time to appreciate the efforts of the men and women of the skies. Locally, the Air Cadets are the youngest members of the Department of National Defence.

“It’s a youth program like scouts and anything else,” says Deputy Commanding Officer for the Air Cadets. “For my 40 plus years, I’ve seen thousands of cadets come through and some have gone on to the military. Others, like Mr. Hatfield who became an astronaut, he’s a former air cadet.”

The 396 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron has been part of Prince George history since 1947.

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“We’ve had kids here who can’t rub two nickels together,’ says Callaghan. “And we’ve got kids here can rub hundred dollar bills together. It’s a cross-section. And that’s the nice thing about the uniform. Everybody’s equal.”

One of those “kids” that entered the Air Cadets at the tender age of 12 is Corey Dajko, who has made lifelong friends.

“It’s so much fun. Like, there’s so many different activities that you can do right? You can learn how to fly a plane. You can learn how to shoot like pellet rifles. You can just learn, drill and march around and just have a bunch of fun. And you make lifelong friends”

And life-lessons are learned there.

“I can confidently get my point across to people and tell them what needs to be done and give appropriate feedback. And I also have gotten more used to public speaking so I can talk to a group of 70 cadets. I still get a little bit nervous if I’m at school or something, right?”

Air force is small but mighty in this country.

“Out of the Canadian Armed Forces cadets, maybe 10 per cent go into the Canadian Forces. And just for a number, there are over 80,000 cadets in Canada between all three. There’s only 50,000 Canadian forces members who can,” says Callaghan.

A special room in the Air Cadets quarters points to the future of Air Cadets, loaded with computer flight-simulators. “With today’s technology, it’s unbelievable,” explakins Callaghan.

“We’ve got there’s countries developing drones and that are flying. They fly automatically. The U.S. military is invested here each time. I think there’s Canadian companies involved with the Air Force. They’re looking at doing it in Canada. It’s unknown for the world out there for that.”

So we’ll see what happens in the one hundred years of the Air Force.