Exciting Aviation Reunion at Confederation College
by Scott A. Sumner
Thunder Bay Business
When you walked into the Confederation College Aviation Centre of Excellence and saw the Snowbird jets in their hangar area you could feel the upbeat atmosphere. The attractive decals of the planes and the students both past and present and past milling around the aircraft was fun to see. Confederation College invited their past graduates for a reunion weekend and two of these students are currently Snowbird pilots! The aviation program started in the mid
70’s and the Thunder Bay Flying Club did the first training. Now the college have 14 aircraft, 2 simulators and are training 100 pilots, with over 120,000 hours of flying time or 14 million miles with no accidents.
Captain Mark LaVerdiere of the Snow Birds graduated from Confederation College in 1992. “ This program is full of people who care about the industry. The staff molded me and supported me in my goal to be a military pilot. We have a dozen students in the airforce
who graduated here. Confederation College is by far the top school in Canada.” smiles LaVerdiere.
Doug Clements, age 39, is from Ottawa originally and now lives in Moosejaw. “ I started at Confederation College in 1988 and graduated in 1990. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot. The military jets used to fly through Thunder Bay and it interested me and I have been in the military for 18 years now,” said Major Doug Clements. “ It is fantastic and a lot of fun flying these aircraft, especially the F 18 and now the Tudor. I flew the F18 for 10 years and now am on to the Tudor. The F18 is a lotta fun. It is a big powerful airplane with 36000 pounds of thrust, more than all 9 Snowbirds jets combined. Tactically you can fly the F18 at 1700 MPH. It is very physical turning G’s of 7.5 side to side. In the F18 you are in G suits.” The F18 were $36 million each when new.
“ It is fantastic being a member of the Snowbirds, who are a national symbol. We get to meet a lot of people. You kinda imagine what it would like be before you join but it really is something special. There is a lot of respect for the the Snowbirds. It is a tight knit squadron, smiled Clements. “ We fly twice a day, training in the winter and do air shows all summer. It is a normal life with the weekends off in the winter. It is a passion for me not a job. We
get paid well but it is not the money. I feel so fortunate.”
Cal Purves is the Director of Flight Operations for Air Canada Jazz. Now living in Toronto, Purves went to the Flight Management program in 1988. He started his career in the float industry for 7 years and then flew in the high arctic with First Air flying the Twin Otter. Cal then got on with Jazz as a flight captain, check captain and training and now the overall chief pilot. “ Confederation College played a big role in my career as Chief Pilot for Jazz. The people,
instructors and a great community all helped. People who work here have a great passion for the program,” said Cal Purves who supervises 1500 pilots. “ It is a good position, fun with lots of challenges. We have 137 aircraft with CRJ’s and then the Dash 8. The CRA is the RJ
705 and have 16 of them. It is a little bigger and flys a little different but the avionics are very similar. For me it took 9 years to get on with Jazz. Some graduates from the aviation community we hired directly into Jazz. You just needed Twin Engine and some different ratings and a experience level. We like to hire quality people with good experience. That is what we like to pull from.”
“Wasaya are looking for pilots and we usually look to hire from Wasaya. There are graduates here this weekend from Air Canada and Westjet that hire from us. It is the state of the industry. Many of our pilots do stay at Jazz,” noted Purves. “ In a normal day I do a
lot of conference calls and meeting to oversee the day to day operations . We have 850 departures a day and it takes a little bit of time to make sure the operation is running safely and smoothly for the passengers. It is a management position but I fly every month to keep my ratings. I fly to Thunder Bay because I have such history here. The industry goes where the economy goes. Usually we either lag or lead. The economy is looking like it is going a little slow. We go where the economy goes.”
A new hire pilot at Jazz is making $40,000 for a first officer and a captain is much higher. The pilots have credit hours of 88 hours in the plane a month. They fly about 600 or 700 hours per year at Air Canada Jazz.
