Air Canada’s first female pilot retires—was trained at Selkirk College

With 37 years of being a commercial pilot under her wings, Judy Cameron, Air Canada's first female pilot retires.

Air Canada's first female pilot, Judy Cameron, retired this year after a career of 37 years. — Photo courtesy Instagram

In May of this year Air Canada’s first female pilot, Judy Cameron, retired.  This was after spending 37 years in the cockpit of everything from DC-3’s to 777 jetliners.

Lost in the headlines was the fact that Judy Cameron took her initial flight training at Selkirk College in Castlegar.

“In the aviation program at Selkirk College in Castlegar, B.C., she was the lone woman in a class of 30 men. She almost didn’t even qualify for the program, and had to hastily arrange to go to summer school for Grade 12 math, a subject that hadn’t interested her before she fell in love with flying. She lacked the mechanical expertise of most of the men, and knew nothing about the physics of flying,” stated the Toronto Star back in May.

However, she successfully completed the College’s two-year commercial aviation program, being the first woman to do so and was soon flying DC-3’s in the Arctic and piloting for a regional carrier out of Edmonton.

Cameron told the Toronto Star that she is proud of being Canada’s first female commercial pilot, but she wishes that more women followed her example. Nearly 40 years after her breakthrough, only 150 of Air Canada’s 3,000 pilots are women, a figure in line with the industry-wide standard of about 4 to 5 per cent.

Unfortunately, due to financial constraints the Selkirk College aviation program was cancelled in July 2015, only months after its first woman graduate retired from commercial flying.  The program cost over a $1 million dollars to operate annually and wasn’t sustainable for the College.

The aviation program at Selkirk was founded in 1968 and was based out the West Kootenay Regional Airport in Castlegar.