UCalgary conference explores past and future of 100-year-old Royal Canadian Air Force

Back in the late 1960s, many pilots serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), such as Calgarian Gordon Todd, trained for something they hoped they'd never have to do.

That's because their duties included “getting ready to drop atomic bombs all over Eastern Europe in the event of a cold war turning hot,” says Dr. David Bercuson, PhD, author of Canada’s Air Force: The Royal Canadian Air Force at 100. The book — which Bercuson will discuss at an upcoming RCAF Centennial Conference — begins with the story of Todd and Canada’s now-defunct nuclear program. 

“We had a whole bunch of fighter planes in Europe that were designed to carry and drop nuclear weapons. Our pilots practised these nuclear missions. Thankfully, they never had to fly them, but they were ready if they had to,” says Bercuson, military historian, a professor in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts, and a fellow at the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies (CMSS).

Bercuson is one of the organizers of RCAF Centennial Conference, Nov 14 and 15, which will gather senior military and government officials, commanders of various wars, fighter pilots, military historians, and others on campus to discuss both the history of the RCAF and the future of the armed service. 

“The Canadian military is an important part of Canadian history and it's also an important part of how Canada works in the world,” says Dr. John Ferris, PhD, professor emeritus of history, another CMSS fellow, and key organizer of the conference. “Looking at our military institutions gives us a sense of where we've been and what we're doing beyond that. If you don't understand the history, you don't see patterns that are present.”

As well as providing a picture of what the RCAF has done over the last 100 years, much of the conference will focus on “where we are going,” says Bercuson. Its keynote speakers include Major-General Jamie Speiser-Blanchet, the RCAF's deputy commander, and Billie Flynn, a retired RCAF combat commander and former experimental test pilot. Mike Ellis, deputy premier and minister for Public Safety and Emergency Services, and Rajan Sawhney, minister of Advanced Education, will also speak.

The event's nine panel discussions will include Cold War pilots talking about their experiences (including Todd), women in the RCAF, opening the Arctic, lessons learned during Canada’s bombing campaign in the 1999 Kosovo War, Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and the RCAF's technical and social history. 

Current global geopolitics — wars in Europe, the Middle East and Africa — plus rising tensions with China mean “we're involved in struggles that are something we haven't really been thinking about for a very long time,” says Ferris. 

This new reality means Canada will need to up its defence budget, he says. “The world is a lot tougher than we had wanted to believe and we're going to have to spend more on our military to maintain our credibility with our allies. They’re tired that whenever the cheque comes to the table, Canada goes off to the bathroom.”

Unfortunately, Bercuson says, conflict has always been part of human society. “Because these things are so nasty, we don't want to think about them,” he says. “But we can’t hide our head in the sand. We can't divorce ourselves from the world.”

The two-day conference will be held at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning on main campus. For more information, visit the website.