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The Pilot Project Podcast is an aviation podcast that aims to help new pilots learn what it takes to succeed in the world of flight, to help people in the flight training system learn what they may want to fly, and to give Canadians and the world a peek into life on the flight deck in the RCAF. We want to help pilots succeed and thrive! We interview real RCAF pilots for their exciting stories as well as the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll learn their tips to develop resilience and the tools it takes to make it in flight training.
THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AI GENERATED AND WILL CONTAIN SOME SMALL ERRORS. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com. We understand the importance of good subtitles but currently as a one-person operation we just don't have the ability to edit these in a timely fashion and keep episodes coming out regularly. Thank you for your understanding!
In this episode, the AI could not differentiate between Melissa and McKayla's voice, so McKayla is mislabeled as Melissa.
All right, we're ready for departure. Here on the Pilot Project
Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the
RCAF. Brought to you by Skies magazine and
RCAF today. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With
me today is my beautiful wife, Melissa Morrison.
Melissa, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
It's always a pleasure to be welcomed into the basement.
So Melissa, can you start by quickly telling us about yourself?
Yeah.
So I was born and raised in
Truro, which is about an hour north of Halifax,
Nova Scotia. I lived there with my parents and
siblings until I went off to university. I
did an undergrad in Kinesiology at
UNB, thinking it would be a more practical
undergrad to get as I was thinking about going to med school at
the time I got sick in university. While I was
waiting to kind of figure out what to do
next, I decided to do a Master's in Sport and Exercise
Science. Partway through that, I
abandoned the idea of medicine altogether and
decided that I should pursue what had always kind of been my
side hustle of sorts business. So I did a
Master's in Business Administration while I worked
full time, ran a business, and coached a lot of cheer
teams.
And I think that's a perfect summary of who you are, that you were
doing two masters at the same time, running a
business, coaching, cheerleading. You were working as
well?
I like to be busy.
Ah, yeah.
Can you tell our listeners about how we met?
We met online before. It was cool. I
had set my, uh, I'm going to age us here plenty of fish
account to a 500 kilometer radius
so I could see all of the prospective suitors
out there. My roommate at the time told me that I
needed to get out and meet people, so she dared me
to go on twelve dates in the month of December.
We later referred to this as the twelve dates of
Christmas. I'm not sure how persistent you
thought I was, but I remember trying to convince you
to meet me a bunch of times,
actually. And one of them was
even coffee at the airport before you flew
home on Christmas holidays. Because I was just desperate to
finish the challenge.
Yeah.
Uh, because I thought you were super into me, and it turned out you were
just doing a challenge.
It's kind of shocking that we actually even met up at
all with all the circumstances of what kind
of happened the next few months. But we
eventually met. We hit it off
pretty well pretty quickly. You were introduced
to the whole cheer team and all of their
parents pretty.
Early on our second date. Yeah.
You met my family pretty quick after that.
Yeah, it was probably our third date.
Yeah.
A funny thing that I always think about is how you tricked me about where you
lived.
So I would go back and
forth between my parents'house in Turo, Nova
Scotia, and school in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
So it would show me as being
from a different location depending on where I was at the time
and when I was talking to Brian. You
were on a course in Halifax?
Yeah, that's right. I was on a course in Halifax for three
months, so I had actually deleted plenty of fish, but decided
to get it again since I was in the city for a few months.
Yeah. You were in Halifax on a course, and you
thought I was living in Truro.
That's right.
But I was actually just visiting at my
parents'house and so you were like, Sweet,
she's only an hour away. Turns out
the regular commute from the Annapolis Valley
to Fredericton is how many hours?
It's about 5 hours with stops. So I spent the next
year and changed almost every weekend, driving 5
hours each way.
Yeah.
So we dated a little over a
year before we got
engaged.
Yeah, we dated for about 14 months. Yeah.
And then I remember thinking we got
engaged in May, and I was like, I really want to have, like,
a summer wedding. And I was like,
but to wait another year just feels like
too long. And I think it was my mom, actually, who
was like, well, why don't you just get married this
summer? So we planned and had
a wedding about 90 days from the time we got
engaged until the time we got married.
And I was gone for a month of that in Hawaii for
RIMPAC, which is a big military exercise.
Yeah.
So I moved all my stuff from Fredericton into
his house and got it all set up while he
was away and planned the wedding
and yeah. Then we got married
and attempted to.
Start our life together.
That's right. So when we did start dating, what was
your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the
RCAF?
I think we mentioned this in one.
Of, uh, the previous episodes, that
dating.
Someone in the RCF was not something that would win me
over, especially the fact that you flew a plane. I
didn't really care a lot about that. What
I knew about people in the RCAF was
really just what I knew from having some friends who were in the
army who were involved in Afghanistan
and would go away for periods of time and then come back.
But to me, that kind of
seemed.
Like a perk because I'm an
introvert.
So having some time to myself every once in a
while didn't seem like a horrible thing,
especially living
with someone who is a very social
extrovert. I kind of thought it would
balance it out, give me some more alone time.
Although at that point, we didn't anticipate
or see long deployments in your future. It
was more just being away on exercises or
being kind of on call, or just
different things like that.
Yeah, most of our deployments at that point were like a couple of weeks for an
exercise or an op here and there. So long deployments
were pretty rare.
Yeah.
So a little bit of extra time to myself just
seemed like, um, an all right thing. That was really about as far as.
I'd really thought about it.
You've had to make some professional sacrifices to follow me
around, especially when we were in Nova Scotia. Can you tell us a little
more about that?
Yeah, being kind of a newer
grad with experiences, but
maybe not like, direct experience, made
it pretty difficult for me to find a job in
a small rural town in Nova
Scotia. At one point, I had
decided to take my master's degrees right off
my resume, and at that point, I started to get a lot
more job interviews. I think people
just perhaps look at your resume thinking
that, well, you're not going to stay here because
maybe they know your military or can tell by your resume,
or maybe they just think you're too overqualified for the
job sometimes when you apply with more
education or experience on your resume. As someone who
hires people now though, I get it. But I
think it never hurts to ask the candidate why they may want
the job you're hiring for, or just to be
transparent with what you can offer in terms of pay and benefits,
so that they can decide if they want to take the job or
not. I do think the world is getting better
in terms of remote work options, which makes it easier for
military spouses to find work, but that isn't
for everyone. I, uh, do think, though, we as
military spouses or maybe this is something we should do a
better job of sharing. Just letting people know that there are
certain careers that are easy to move with
and others that are much harder if people are
just thinking about their career but maybe
are in a relationship with someone who is in the
RCAF. I think most military spouses
just end up looking for flexibility when it comes to
work because someone is at
home and someone ends up being responsible for the
majority of that. When you are with someone who is
away a lot, you often have to manage everything as a
single parent, maybe without family or friends around.
So trying to set yourself up for day to day
success is something
a lot of people look for. And unfortunately, this often
means that some professional sacrifices
may take place depending on.
Your line of work.
Did you find that frustrating at all when we were in Nova
Scotia, I.
Found it so frustrating because I wanted to find
community and I wanted to gain experience. So I
was, at that point, willing to take
lower paying jobs or jobs that maybe
weren't directly affiliated with my
degrees. Like, my two degrees are in fairly
different areas, so there was lots of kind
of room to grow and learn
more. And yeah, it was very
frustrating. There's some really small places that
some of the bases are, and it can be, uh, a
frustrating experience for spouses trying to find work. Sometimes,
I think.
Yeah, for sure. So most of our
listeners will know that I'm not currently flying due to a
mental health diagnosis. But when I was flying, how did you
find balancing our jobs as well as having children?
Truthfully, I think it's been harder for me, since you've
stopped flying to balance working and having
kids, just given everything that you're going
through right now with your diagnosis, I've
had to take on a bit more with
just managing our life in general.
Yeah, that's fair.
We were kind of lucky that we.
Didn'T have to manage balancing jobs and
kids for too long between
parental leaves and getting posted.
But I do remember that it was a bit of a juggling act,
especially when it came to childcare.
Our childcare was right by the base. On your way
to work, normally, you would do all the pickups and drop
offs. So when you were flying
or away on an exercise or just getting
called out if you were on call, i, uh, would have to
use banked or holiday hours just to manage
drop offs or pickups because I had a 40 ish
minute commute in the opposite direction.
So earlier you mentioned that once you
moved to Greenwood with me, that we
had to try to start our life together. I
actually deployed when we had been married for less than two months.
What was that like for you, looking back?
I think I was in shock at first. We found out, what, two weeks
after we got married?
Yeah, about that.
When you tried to put in a leave pass for our honeymoon,
where were we going?
We were supposed to go to Jamaica with a couple friends of ours, Matt
and Brienne. And when I went
to ask about the leave pass, the flight commander
told me, you might want to hold off on that. There's something coming down
the pipe. And I thought,
because things were going on in Europe at the time, that I was going to
go over to Europe, and I was all excited.
And then it turned out to be flying over the
Middle East, which, again, I was excited for. But it
wasn't what I was expecting at all as a submarine hunter.
Yeah.
And I think it being Roto zero
for the listeners.
Roto zero is rotation zero. It means you're the first people to
go over.
I think that was the hardest part the military
didn't know answers to anyone's questions. I
remember sitting in the mess on the
base with, uh, everyone else who was about to go on
Roto Zero. And in the briefing, they
didn't know where you guys were going to stay. You guys thought
you were staying intense when you showed up there. They didn't know
what communication was going to look like or how you were
going to be able to contact home or how often,
or just any of that, which
was hard not knowing, but also
hard because we had never experienced that. You had never
experienced that. There was no kind of knowledge to
pass on to make it feel better. It was just a lot of
unknown. I just moved there, so I didn't really
know anyone at that point in time. I
coped really bad and just assumed
the worst to the whole situation. I just
kind of thought about the fact that
we just got married.
This sucks.
You're probably not going to come back, because it felt very much
like you were going into a full war zone at that
point because there was so little known about it. And I
just kind of figured I would be a widow
and this would be really tough, but I would figure
out a way to move on. And then I kind of
thought, if you came back alive, awesome. We could
then finally start our life together.
I think this was really brought home. I
think it was in your first tour. I
remember two men in matching outfits
creeping around our base house, kind of like looking
in windows. It looked like they were, like, seeing if anyone was home.
I was upstairs watching them from the windows, trying to figure out
what was going on. Everything I
could think of was that they wanted to see if someone was
home. Because any movie about military
people, you may remember that if
two people in uniform come to
knock on your door, it's generally not good news. They're
generally coming to tell you that someone has passed away.
So this is what was going on in my head as
I'm creeping down, because they're not going to call you
to tell you this stuff. They're going to come to your house.
So at that point, all of the
horrible thoughts I had kind of had became very real
in that moment until obviously I
answered the door and they just wanted
to ask questions or schedule something to fix
on the house.
I've heard that story a few times before, but I don't
think I had ever connected it with the assumptions you'd
made about me not coming back. I never
realized how tough that must have been when that happened that
day.
Looking back, I think it impacted
me.
More than I thought it did at the time. The time I was
just probably more relieved than anything that
they weren't coming to tell me that you died. Our
time between deployments was
really weird, is how I would best describe it.
It's really hard to build a foundation or grow your
relationship when the other person isn't there. And for us, we
were pretty newly married. This was our first
time living together or even being in the same
province for any length of time. Being
deployed isn't like your long distance dating, which is kind of what
I thought it would be like. And I was like, whatever. We've been doing
this our whole relationship. No big deal, because
you can't be real and you can't talk
for hours or just like, FaceTime while you're
doing whatever. I found it
really shallow in terms of our
conversations. It definitely felt like we were protecting
each other. I didn't want to worry you so that you could
stay focused and do your job and come
home alive. And I think you didn't want to scare me
with kind of the things that were really going on.
Yeah, for sure.
There's lots you probably weren't allowed to tell me, so
that also makes sense why it felt that way.
Yes.
I just remember, especially your first
deployment, that time period was
really lonely for me. I wasn't working full
time at that point. Had just moved there.
I remember the running joke on your first tour was, uh, that you were going to come
home to me holding a puppy.
Well, Melissa was sending me photos of
puppies almost every day for dogs that she
wanted. And we did get a dog in between deployments.
Yeah.
So it happened. But I didn't surprise you with a dog?
No. The first time you left,
I didn't.
Have a support network, so that made it really hard. It
was supposed to be our first Christmas together.
Didn't happen because you were gone, and we didn't know
you were going to be gone that Christmas. We thought you'd be home
before that. I was lucky, though, that I
found another newly married spouse to hang out with during that
time. That kind of helped a little bit. And I
did have some extended family, and my parents weren't that
far away from where we were living at the time,
so that helped a bit. Into the second
tour, things got a little bit better. The Aurora
community set up sponsor families and stuff, which
was nice, and you'd meet the rest of the
crew you were going with before you went,
and you just had someone who would reach out
every once in a while to make sure things were doing okay.
I think that's a piece that
a lot of us could do better at, just helping to support
one another. We also had neighbors who would come
snowblow our driveway, which was a godsend, because that was the
winter where every Wednesday it would snow twelve to
18 inches every single week.
That was an insane winter for snow.
So much snow.
That's the one where on Pei, people had
snow up to their roofs. And it wasn't quite that bad in Nova
Scotia, but it was close.
Yeah.
Very grateful for the community we had around
there. I remember before you left,
we'd gotten a power of attorney just in case
I needed to do anything else, because we weren't even set up as a couple
to have a joint bank account or anything like
that. Little did we know, all of the things I
would end up using that for over the years because you
were gone.
We bought a car.
We bought a house. I moved into
our military house on
my own. I moved into our house. We bought
in Greenwood. Eight months pregnant without you
because you were away.
I was in the Arctic for yeah.
Like, it's crazy to think about all these big
life things that I just.
Did on my own because you were gone.
Do you remember anything special we did to help get through
the deployments?
For me as an individual, I just did a lot of
compartmentalizing and trying to focus
on what I was doing. And then if I got to talk.
To you, it was like, sweet, he's.
Alive, and I get to talk to him. But I really tried to
just go with the flow of the day to day and try to keep
myself busy. I do remember going
very extreme when it came to
care packages. So I remember your
birthday. One, like, the whole inside of the box was
covered in streamers, and there was so much stuff in that
box.
Yeah. You sent me cake in a jar. There was Mason jars
full of cake that I could share with my friends fake
mustaches. You would send me USB
sticks pretty regularly with another set of
the latest top hits for music
so that I could listen to what you were listening to at home when I
was working out.
Yeah.
And Christmas. I remember the Christmas
package once we realized you weren't going to be
there. I think they even let us do a special Christmas
mail.
Yeah, they did, because they got there pretty quick.
But I had sent you, like, a little mini light up Christmas
tree and lights to decorate your bunk and Santa
hat. And obviously, like, our, uh, traditional
Christmas traditions of pajamas and things like
that in your box just to try and make it feel a
little bit special.
It was nice, for sure. It was a tough time. It was not easy to be
away at Christmas. I really wanted to be home with you, but
those things helped, for sure.
Yeah.
And I just got to be one of those people that kept their
Christmas decorations, uh, up forever, because put
them up after Remembrance Day and kept
them up until you came home. And we could
actually have Christmas, which ended up being
February. So it was definitely
the longest I've ever had Christmas decorations up.
Uh, what do you think has been the hardest part
of being espoused to someone in the RCAF
for some people.
And I think for me at one point as well, I think
the change and need to adapt to, uh, new places, new
plans, all of that stuff is really
hard. Change is kind of a constant in life, though.
And I think for most couples, this doesn't really
sink in until you have kids, just how
much things change every couple of weeks with kids, something
changes. So I think I've
gotten a lot better at, uh, dealing with change
and adapting to things as they come. Kind of
rolling with it, making the best out of situations
now.
Yeah, for sure.
I've definitely grown in that area. For
me, the hardest part is the
unknown. I'm pretty big at
compartmentalizing and living to make kind of the best set of
moments. So that definitely has helped me a lot. But
you never know when a flight will be unserviceable
or when a call out will happen. When you're on call,
remember your check ride for your aircraft captain
upgrade?
Yeah. It got delayed a bunch and ended up being on my
30th birthday. Yeah.
So we were like, all right, he's got this
upgraded flight. A couple of weeks later is his birthday.
We should be pretty safe to plan his birthday because he's
not on the schedule yet. And yeah, delay
after delay finally ends up. You take off
like, the morning of your birthday party,
finally. And this is like his 30th
birthday.
So we've got like, I don't know.
2025 people coming to our house
for supper, I think even. And
the whole time I'm, um, like, is he going to make it to
his birthday party? No idea. Because you're flying.
So obviously I don't know when you're going to get down. I'm just,
like, waiting for a message. People are like, Is he
home yet? Is he coming? People are showing up to
your birthday party at our house.
Don't know where you are.
And then eventually we get a text message.
And I'm like, he's coming. And he passed. And I
just remember being so relieved that I didn't have
to just host this giant party by myself. That wasn't
even for me. And then it was pretty epic,
though, when you showed up. And it's not only your
birthday and all your friends are around you to celebrate, but
also you had this good news that you passed your
upgrade plate.
Yeah, that was a great day.
Yeah.
What has been the best part of being a spouse to someone in the
RCIF?
The community you get to be part of is
just incredible.
You have to do work and put.
In work to kind of make it happen. But you have
so many instant connection points with other
people who are in the RCAF.
Those people get it.
They know what you've been through or what you might be going
through. You can laugh at kind of the struggles
and ridiculousness of the system, but you can
also learn from each other.
I find.
There's always someone willing to make new friends or
looking for friends and there's always kind of places
to stay around the world, which is pretty cool.
If you like to travel, what's been.
Your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
Flying the Aurora with you was a pretty
surreal moment for me.
Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Before that, I'd never really even pictured you
flying an airplane, believe it or
not. So to get to do that together on
Family Day was pretty neat.
I've seen you and your friends
study every part of that plane and talk about
it for hours on end and then to
actually be in it, watching you do what you do is pretty
cool.
Yeah, I really enjoyed that experience too.
For this next and uh, last question. I'd like you to
picture a young pilot, maybe somebody who's going through the
school. Now, what piece of advice would you give to a young
pilot to help them have a successful family life?
There's probably two things
that I would suggest. I'll talk a little bit more about each
of them. The first is to ask questions, and
the second is to find community. So
by asking questions, whether you're the spouse
or partner or the military
member, ask the questions so that you know what to
expect. Unmet expectations,
as probably most people can agree with,
are often the cause of turmoil in a relationship.
It's not an easy road, but there's amazing resources to
help families thrive in the RCAF. But you have
to know about them and sometimes you have to
push and, uh, ask specifically for them.
Talking to other couples or colleagues who may be that
stage or two ahead of you is kind of a great way to
learn about what the future could look like and issues
that could come up. They really should write a gen
file for family life, I think, if there isn't already one
out there, just to give people
insight. Relationships are tough in or
out of the military, but I really believe strongly that
if you're both willing to put in the work, there's lots of
resources available to help you succeed
along the way. And uh, when it comes to
finding community, finding community
is what will make your life feel full. We had a
great group of friends before we had kids and we have an
amazing community here in Portage right now.
And having those people helps your mental
health, but it also gives you options to help
manage your family life, especially during those
times when you may be solo parenting. So
it can be a huge support just
to help you navigate all the different things
that you as a military family might come up
against, whether it's deployments
or trips away or things like that.
And I think just being open and.
Willing to kind of pay it forward. I remember
when we first got here, people didn't really go away
a lot, but when you guys would do your cross
countries, I'd always be like, who's away?
Who's away?
Let's make sure we have them over so it's one less meal they
have to think about or mhm, something like that when
someone's away. And I think just looking for those little
opportunities to also give back and
help support your community where you are
is just a good way to constantly make
sure that the military
community is going to keep supporting one another in the
future.
Yeah, for sure. So Melissa actually came
home today during her workday for her lunch break to record
this. So I just want to thank you so much. I know from personal
experience how busy you are, and I really appreciate you taking
the time to be here today. Thank you.
No problem.
If you ever need me back, you.
Know where I live.
All right, so our next guest today on the Pilot Project podcast
is my good friend Janet Musters. Listeners will remember
our show on Tackhill with Janet's husband, Pete.
Welcome to the show, Janet.
Thanks for having me.
So, Janet, can you start by quickly telling us about yourself?
I was born and raised on a, uh, small farm in southern
Alberta near a little village called Milo.
After I graduated, I got my private pilot's license, thinking this
would be an exciting career for me. After I finished
my private pilot's license, I took a year and went backpacking with
my friend and realized I was way more fun than having
any career. So spent a while backpacking and
waitressing just to fund my traveling addiction.
Then, uh, decided I needed an actual career
and figured people around the world like to eat. So I went and gotten a
culinary arts degree. Worked at that for a little
bit, realized it really wasn't for me. And then after a brief
stint in banking, I actually ended up, at the
age of 27, going into school for my
nursing degree and, uh, became a registered nurse
and kind of realized along the way that this is actually where I was meant to
be and have been working at that ever since.
So you've had a lot of adventures?
Eh, I have had a few twists and turns along the
way, trying to know, as everyone has, figuring life out, figuring
out who they are and what their real passions and interests
are.
Yeah, I mean, that actually is kind of similar to Pete,
right? Like, he had a couple different stages to
his career through life before he landed on being a pilot in the
RCAF.
Exactly.
How did you and Pete meet each other?
Uh, the running joke is that I bought him off the
Internet. I was single, and I
was in school full time, and I was working. Part
was really it was. Hard to meet people. One
night I was sitting there, finished my homework, had a
glass or two of wine, and realized, maybe I should try this online
dating thing. Uh, the first profile I ever
saw was Peter's, and he's the only one I ever
contacted. Unfortunately, in order to
be able to contact the person whose profile you're viewing,
you had to sign up and pay $60 a month for
this dating app. And I'm a student with a
mortgage at the time. So I kind of sat down, looked at my budget and
realized, you know what, I'm going to eat instant noodles for a
month in the hopes that this guy is going to turn out to be
something special. And he was. So nine
months later, after about five months apart for basic training
and a two day engagement, we actually eloped. Which,
uh, is very typically military, I think. Yeah, we've
been married for over twelve years now and we have two beautiful
daughters. So the tagline is not bad for $60
is kind of how we kind of defined our relationship.
Yeah.
You got good value for money.
Yeah.
Good ROI on that one, for sure.
What was your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the
RCAF?
Well, Pete actually wasn't in the RCAF when we met.
He had his commercial license and he'd done some crop dusting and
some work as a glider tow. You know, bills have to be
paid and those typically don't pay too
well. So he was actually teaching high school social studies when I met
him. He had been applying to the RCAF for about, I
think, five years and they just weren't hiring
anybody. Weren't hiring anybody. And then
shortly after we met the RCAF, ah, called and said,
guess what? Your application's accepted. So for him, it was
awful. He had just met this great girl and now he's got this great job
and he wasn't sure which one he might have to give up or how
compatible the two are going to be. But fortunately,
given my previously somewhat nomadic lifestyle,
i, uh, was actually up for the adventure. So the
challenge was that he took off for his five month basic training
course only four months after we met. So he didn't have
a cell phone at that time. And, uh, we actually wrote
letters back and forth while he was at basic training for those five months,
which is kind of sweet and nostalgic. I still have all
of them bound with a ribbon in a
safe little, uh, box somewhere.
But it documents a relationship from the typical
dating, getting to know you letters to I'll bring the
engagement ring to your graduation ceremony and I have the church booked for two
days later. So it's kind of fun to have
the chronology of our entire relationship documented on
paper.
So you guys basically
arranged that by letter while he was on
basic training?
Yeah, and the occasional phone call from the hallway.
That's right.
Yeah.
The payphones in the mega.
Yeah. That's the only other source of
communication.
Yeah. There wasn't much privacy back then.
No, not so much. So, yeah, that was basically how we
arranged everything and booked everything, and,
uh, we got a cell phone shortly after he
graduated.
So you're pretty busy. You work as a registered nurse and also
as a nurse injector and you and Pete also have two
kids. How have you found balancing employment,
parenthood, and being married to an RCAF pilot?
It requires a very large calendar in our kitchen.
Uh, some days it feels a little bit like hot know?
Okay, you're on school daycare, drop off this day, and then I can
do pickup. Then you have drop off and pick up, unless my last
client cancels, in which case you can take the later flights and I'll pick
up. I think one of the biggest challenges with being a
military spouse is that you often have no support. You're
often dropped into this random town. You have no family,
no friends. You're trying to do it all on your own until
you find your tribe of people. I mean, every military
spouse knows the struggle of filling out the emergency contact
lists on the daycare and school
applications. It's like, what was that grocery store
clerk's name? She's nice. I'll ask for her number. I'm sure
she wouldn't mind being our contact. You literally know no
one.
Yeah.
Uh, fortunately, when we moved here, there were a couple of other orphan
military families who had also recently been
posted in. So we kind of banded together and formed our
own second family here. And it's been pretty amazing ever
since. But juggling schedules, especially
when my hospital shifts are 12 hours and the clinic shifts have
varying hours, and Peter's doing cross countries and night
flyings, it can just get a little chaotic.
We go week by week and just try to keep things as routine
as possible for the kids. And in three years of school, we've
only forgotten to pick the kids up once, so I think
we're managing pretty well.
So Pete deployed to Iraq. At a time in life when
you had a 22 month old and a two month old,
what was that like for you?
That was rough, I guess, is the.
Best way to describe it.
Fortunately, it was a bit of a shorter deployment. His
deployment was just under four months. I know some people can be deployed
for six months, nine months, so I was grateful for that.
He was actually initially supposed to be on the first wave of
deployments, which would have had him away when
our youngest was born. But fortunately, he was able
to switch with someone on the second wave so that he could at least be
here for her birth. I remember being very
intentional about making sure that we had family photos done
after our youngest was born on the surface, you tell yourself, oh,
it's just because we want to celebrate our growing family, but
deep down it's because your spouse is deploying and like,
well, what if?
It was really hard.
We were living in a town where I really only had made one close
friend and I was too exhausted to get out and do
many activities. My oldest didn't nap well,
and I had a newborn and they both woke up two to three times a
night, each at different times. And my closest family
was 4 hours away. So I was existing at about three to
4 hours of sleep a night for almost four months.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah. Fun times. I was able to spend several weeks with my
parents, fortunately, and that was helpful. But there's a reason that they
use sleep deprivation as a torture device. I can
attest to that. Uh, I remember at one point, I think
my lowest was when my kitchen sink got clogged
and I'm lugging my kids all around town. I'm half
asleep, I'm trying to borrow plumbing snakes from Peter's
coworkers and our neighbors. And then we get home and the
sink won't unclog and I'm covered in bits of whatever was in the
drain and the kids are crying and hungry and I'm starting to cry.
It was just one of those moments where you're like, it can't
get any worse than so. But we
got through it one long day at a time and lived to tell the
tale, fortunately. I, uh, remember when Peter got
home and he was on post deployment leave. He told me he wanted to
do a Janet deployment week where I basically
existed in the house with no responsibility other
know, breastfeeding our youngest. And he really wanted to try
and understand what the experience was like for me. And I think it
was quite an eye opener for him. I stood there the first day and
I looked around and I literally had no clue what to do with
myself. I was completely disoriented.
Wow, that's an awesome idea that Pete had to
do that.
Mhm.
But what a crazy hard experience
that sounds like to have that. You know, the part
that really hit me was when you were talking about making sure you
get photos done just in case.
Yeah, I still kind of tear up a little bit thinking about it, because you're just
like most people would document.
The birth of a child right.
Just as a happy time. And it was kind of this really
mixed emotions, like being like, I really want to make sure we get those
photos because otherwise we'll have no
photos as a family.
It was kind of a mixed emotion that day.
But I'm, um, glad we got it.
Yeah, everybody kind of copes with those thoughts
and those fears in different ways.
Exactly.
It is really hard though. It's a very hard thing to say
goodbye to your loved ones. And I think
harder for the ones who are staying behind,
because when we go over, we're busy, we're
doing our job.
You have control over your situation.
We have control and we have all the information.
Yeah, exactly.
And you can't have all the information.
Yeah, we just kind of sit there waiting and
when is the next phone call? When is the next text?
Haven't heard from him in a while. It's just
you're kind of along for the ride and you're just
waiting.
How, uh, did you get through that?
Well, I was pretty busy with the
kids, and fortunately that just kept me distracted
enough. As many spouses, I
think you just throw yourself into family life and you throw
yourself into your kids, and there's
often not a lot of time left at the end of the day.
And those few minutes you do have, you just kind of
let it pass and get back to whatever you're doing.
And that was my coping mechanism
anyways, just to kind of keep busy and keep my
brain occupied. So you just don't let it stray into all those other
thoughts.
What's been the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the
RCAF besides deployment?
I think the hardest part for me so far was when he was
posted to 408 Squadron in Edmonton, which is
a tactical helicopter squadron. When we were there, it just
seemed like the unit was running at 110% at
all times, and they were just incredibly busy,
which, I mean, it's not necessarily bad, but given
the nature of what they do, there was absolutely zero.
Predictability to Peter's schedule.
I mean, he would go to work on a Tuesday morning and I would have no
idea if I should plant dinner for him Tuesday night. The schedule
would change multiple times a day, and at one point he realized
he had worked for two months without a day off because they were helping
with wildfires, they were doing training exercises.
He'd always be coming home saying, okay, I should have this weekend off.
And then he didn't, or I should be getting a day or
two off in lieu next week. But then he had to replace somebody on
an exercise at the last minute and took off for a week. You
basically just plan your life as if your spouse doesn't exist,
and then if they happen to be there, it's a bonus. But
if inevitably they aren't, then it doesn't mess with
your mean. I couldn't even
plan know, dentists, doctors,
haircuts, anything, if it was at all dependent on Peter
being available to take.
Care of the kids.
So it was really hard on her oldest, who was still under two at
the Know Kids Crave routine. And she had no idea
if Peter was coming or going or if he was
home. But he had to sleep because he was night flying, so he couldn't
play with her. Deployments are hard, but at
least they're somewhat know, you have sort of a
set, uh, start date, a set end date, one
goodbye and one hello. But this was
an entirely different challenge. I think another
hard part was when he came to me, I think this was just a couple of
weeks after he got back from his
and you know, you're still in that reintegration stage
of the relationship, which is as challenging as the
separation part. And I'm recovering from the exhaustion of the last
four months and still kind of in that,
you know, flux. And he comes home
from work and he says to me, uh, by the way, I think we're being posted to
Manitoba in a few months where we know no one in my family's support
is now going to be two provinces away. So that was
also another low, I would say another
challenge.
Um yeah. Luckily it turned out to be a great
thing.
It did, it really did.
But you have no idea when you just get the
news, right?
Yeah. There's a couple of things there that I think are worth
touching on. One is you mentioned the difficulty
of reintegration.
Mhm absolutely.
Really hard. When you come back, everyone is really
excited. Right. But there's some apprehension and
something you have to realize if you're the person who is away is that while you've
been gone, your spouse has figured out a
way to make everything work without you.
Yeah.
You have your routine, you have your systems in
place. Exactly.
And that that's. Okay. And you have to sort of
softly reinsert yourself into
the pattern of life around your house because
they already have their ways and you can't just
kick in the door and be like, I'm home, it's going to be back to the way it
used to be. Mhm, it's just not how it works. I think it
surprises a lot of people that, um, coming home,
it can be really tough.
Yeah, absolutely. And just depending on
each person's emotional or
affection stage by nature right. My husband's a very
affectionate person. I take a little bit longer to warm up,
so there's always that clash too.
Right.
He wants to rush in and he wants to give me a big hug and I
just need a little bit more time to kind of
get my brain kind of wrapped around. Okay, I
have my spouse back now and then
just I've been running on fumes and
I'm exhausted and I've managed to figure out a way to
cope and now you want to come in and mess this way up
and no, you can't. This is how I survive
and just sort of realizing that I need to let go
of some of my systems. Um, and he needs to
adopt some of them and just kind of finessing
that it takes a little while. It's not just
like everybody's back together and it's all hunky dory.
It's a bit of a process.
Yeah. And I think that's important for people to know who haven't deployed
before, that that's something they might face.
M absolutely.
The other thing that I think is important to highlight is
just acknowledging how tough it can be at an operational
unit and that, that busyness and craziness is just
the way things are there. And I think
that for young pilots who are
listening, you need to realize that there's a reason
that the intent is not to have people at an operational
unit for, like, ten years in a row. Because it just causes so much
burnout and it can be so hard on families. And that's why
they want to rotate you into a school or a ground
position. So especially if you can get one of those school jobs,
it provides such a great break for you and for
your family.
Yeah.
And especially when you're thinking about the kids. And that was
my biggest challenge, is just the
unpredictability of, uh, the day to
day. If somebody said to me, okay, so for the
next two weeks, your husband's going to be working every day,
great, I can plan for that. I can maybe
make a longer trip out to visit family, I can
maybe plan my life a little bit. But when
it's going day to day, like, oh, maybe tomorrow or, uh,
we'll have time together as a family or oh, I'm going to be off this
weekend, so you get the kids really hyped up for, okay, Daddy's going to
be home this weekend. Oh, there's a festival in town, we're going to go
this festival as a family. And then Friday he's packing his
bags to go off to some other training exercise
because there's a last minute change of plans.
Then the kids are broken hearted. I thought we were going to
do this. Then you're doing all these plans you made by yourself
and it's interesting the plans you make when you think there's going to be two
of you to take care of two kids versus the plans you
make when you know you're going to be solo are often very
different.
Absolutely.
Um, yeah, it's exhausting and it's
frustrating and it's stressful in a different way
as deployments are, but it doesn't mean, uh,
it's any less difficult. So
absolutely. Coming to Portage and just
seeing that routine and even in just the first couple weeks
were here, pete would come home from work and be
like, okay, I'm going to go tomorrow, I'm going to go
to work at nine, I'm going to be home
at six. And the kids were like, okay, so
he went to work at nine and then he was actually home
at six or maybe even a few minutes earlier. And
just the change that I saw in our oldest, like our youngest was one,
she didn't time is not a really irrelevant thing for her at
that point, but our oldest was three and the change I saw in
her was amazing. Just to have some routine, some
predictability. I can trust that my parent is going to
be there when they say they're going to be there was huge for
her and for me as well. I remember
Pete came to me one day and he's like, okay, so
next month we're looking at doing some cross countries
and this and that. What do you think about me going
for these days on cross country? And I just stood there and I.
Looked at him, um, I'm sorry, next
month.
We're planning next month. My brain was
ready to explode because I'd never been able to plan
tomorrow. So just kind
of being able to relax into the
knowledge that we can make
plans, we can have some routine was a
huge weight off my shoulders and
yeah, I think that the military members
who are working often don't appreciate how
much that can mean to the person at home. Trying
to manage everything day to day just to be able to have that
predictability.
Yeah, for sure. What's been the
best part of being a spouse to someone in the RCAF?
The adventures are awesome. That's for know,
always imagining where you might go next. Are we going to go to
Comox? Are we going to go to GooseBay? Could it be an outCan? Posting
to Germany or the know, getting to
live in areas of the country that you never thought you
would? I, in a million years, never would have thought I'd be living
in southern Manitoba. Yet here we are and we're finding all kinds of
awesome things to do. It has been a lot of fun,
but honestly, the best part has really been all the amazing families
you meet. We all have this unique shared experience
that not a lot of other people can really
understand or relate to. We're kind of in it
together and other military spouses just get
it. They understand the challenges, they can
anticipate what your needs are going to be. And we
really just create this community of support. And once you've been in the
military long enough, there aren't too many places that you can be
posted to where you won't know at least one person. So your
tribe just kind of grows from there. But I've
said before that this is the best and the worst part of being a
military spouse. You get to meet all these amazing families
and all these amazing people, but then you also have to leave them.
So it's kind of a double edged sword from my experience.
Yeah, that's true. It is hard because
everybody in this lifestyle learns the skill of
making fast friends.
Yes, absolutely.
Which is amazing. But it is tough because we're
always moving on. You're always not losing
friends, but those friends are always they might be only a year
away from saying goodbye for who knows how long. And
that's tough.
It is.
And I think for us, our
biggest challenge now is because we've been here for five
years. You're always talking, postings, coming
up and where are we going to go? And just kind of
trying to broach the subject with our kids
because they love their life here too, and just
trying to build that resiliency in them. And every time we bring it up,
it really upsets them, the thought that their
friends aren't going to be here all for the rest of their lives because
they were so young when we moved here and they've had such a
formative part of their childhood so far
here. So that's something that
I'm anticipating and dreading
eventually moving on. But in the meantime,
they've just had the best group of friends they could ever had
for the last five years.
So we will see what the future holds.
Yeah, I can relate to that. It is really hard
to think about either leaving or
others leaving and it makes it so much tougher
even when you've got kids in the picture who have made those
connections and you really don't want to see their little hearts break.
Yeah. And it'll be the first time we've had to consider
their feelings and their emotions up to a
certain point.
It's like, you're two, you're coming with
us.
You don't have much say. But now that they're older, we want to
include them in the decision making process as much as we can.
And just trying to figure out what.
That looks like is challenging.
Yeah, that's something we'll have to navigate as we keep going
forward.
What's been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
That's a tough one.
I was trying to think about it.
And I think one of the coolest.
Experiences is always when they have family day at the base. Once
a year you get to have an opportunity to
take a flight with your spouse or
somebody else if you want to try a different
aircraft. Uh, just watching the kids
watch their dad, it really helps them connect with
and understand what he's doing when he can't be with them on a day to
day basis. And I think that's really great. And
I mean, flying low in a helicopter is
always pretty fun too,
for sure. I'm sure we're not going as low as
they usually fly, so I can only imagine
what it's like for them.
But I enjoy it.
That's my favorite part of it is getting those little
experiences that not a.
Lot of other people would get to.
Have and to connect with. What Peter's doing on a day to
day basis is also a really big thing for us.
Yeah. For is it's huge to get that
to make it real instead of just make it an idea.
Mhm. You see them flying overhead
know, over our house every day, multiple
helicopters and airplanes. But it's different when you get to.
Be in the aircraft with them.
So I uh, want you to picture a new
pilot here in Southport, someone who's in training,
let's say you run into them at a mass dinner and they ask for
advice. What advice would you give to that young pilot to
help them have a successful family life in the
RCAF?
I think the biggest piece
from my.
Point of view would be you have to be willing and able to see this
life from your spouse's perspective as well as your
own.
Right.
Really putting in time and effort to understand that,
yes, we're not being deployed, we're not going into war
zones and other dangerous situations, but
we are still enjoying a lot of stress trying
to manage home life alone and normalize things for the
kids and figure out how to build an entire support
group from scratch every few years. And just keep some of
that burden off of you so that you can
be fully present in your job and stay safe so that you can come home to
us. So I think that would be my biggest
piece of advice is to really appreciate the
piece that we are doing at home that allows
you to be present and active at work.
And giving your wife her own deployment week every
once in a while is also highly recommended.
Yeah, I was going to say what are the ways that someone can do
that, but that's actually a great way they can to take on that
role for a week and really get a taste of what that's
like.
Uh, yeah, just appreciating that
we may not have imminent danger or
stress in that regard, but it's a different level
of challenges. Mhm it's no less valid
or valuable to the situation.
Okay, Janet, that's going to wrap it up for this
interview. So I just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time
out of your day and being on the show.
Thanks so much, Brian. It was great to be here.
Yeah.
My next guest today on the Pilot Project podcast is my
former squatter mate, Michaela Goddard. Welcome to the show, Michaela.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So Michaela, can you start by quickly telling us about
yourself?
Yeah, so I grew up in Alberta for the
most part, and I joined the military right
after high school. So I signed up when I was 18 and I went
right away to the Royal Military College. When I was
there, I studied English Lit because the military
told me that.
I didn't need a specific degree to be a navigator.
So I chose one that I was interested in rather than one that's actually
useful. So I studied English
at RMC and I graduated in 2014. And then
after that I was posted to Winnipeg to do my navigator
training or Axo course. And
once that course was done, I got posted to
Greenwood to 405 with you or I guess 404
technically to do the training on the Aurora and
then 405. And I finished my career out
in Greenwood. I retired, actually, December
30 of this, um, past year, so
2022.
Okay, cool. Now, your
husband is Paul, and you were a service couple,
which means you were both serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. How did the
two of you meet?
We, uh, actually met at RMC. Paul was a year
ahead of me in the same squadron, so the college is broken up
into twelve or 13 squadrons, depending what year you were
there. And so he was a year ahead of me. So that
year is kind of assigned to be mentors to the first
years or the year below them. And so I actually
met him my first couple of weeks at RMC, and we became best
friends once we had a little bit more freedom after the first
year orientation period. So, yeah, we became friends, and
we actually didn't start dating each other until Paul
was at his Wings graduation
from Southport and was getting posted to Labrador.
And I was, uh, in Winnipeg at the time on my training.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, we'd been friends for about five and a half years before
we actually got together officially, and then he
proposed five months later. Yeah, which is
great, except the people that didn't know us were a little
shocked, a little concerned.
Yeah. But you'd known each other for we'd.
Known each other for years, almost, at that point.
Yeah.
For a long time. And we were really good friends. And my parents loved
him more than the other people I had dated. So,
I mean, um, anyone that knew us was really excited about
it. But then we didn't get married until 2018, so
we got married just before his posting in GooseBay
was due to come up so that he could get posted
down to the same location I.
Was at, which at the time was Greenwood.
Was Greenwood. Yeah. The timing wasn't just that. We also had to
juggle a lot of other family things. Um, his brother is in the
infantry and was deploying at the time, so
we had to kind of work around trying to get everybody there
for the wedding and have it done before the posting season came out, and there were so
many factors that came into it. So we ended up getting married in February in the
mountains, and everyone was great and
no one got cold, is what they told
me.
So, when you guys decided to date, what was your
initial thought when it came to dating someone in the
RCAF?
Like, we know each other for five years. I'd been in the military and at that
point for five years, and I had dated other
people also in the military, because I guess the nature of
the college of RMC was that it was so time consuming
and so all consuming that the chances of meeting someone outside of it
were like, zero. Um, especially
if you had any time to leave the peninsula.
The campus and go meet people. I also
found a lot of people seem to be
uncomfortable with having, if they weren't in the military,
dating a woman that was in the military. Even though
I was in the Air Force, in my mind, I'm like, I'm not hardcore at
all, I'm not an Infanter, so this should be fine. But a lot
of people seem to have a problem with that. And I get that too, because the
implication is that you'll be moving a lot and that and people aren't
willing to do that and that's fine. So at the time, the fact
that he was in the military almost made it better because he would
understand my schedules, even just things like
terminology and, um, acronyms and stuff
and processes like trying to get a leave pass in and
trying to be able to schedule things around
exercises. That wasn't something I had to explain to him because he already knew
it. So it actually was like a point in my favor,
but it's pretty much all consuming, especially when you get
to your operational squadron. So I never would have had the
time to meet anybody else.
Not that that's the only reason I would fall at all.
But yeah, for me it was like kind of a no brainer because it was something
that allowed us, uh, to start off kind of on the same
footing.
So for you guys, it almost made it easier.
Yeah, I think so. And it helped too,
because pilot and axo training isn't
similar in the steps, but it's similar in the kind
of intensity and focus that you need for those really
kind of concentrated periods of time. And
you still are on a flying schedule. So a lot of that
commonality made it easier for us to understand how we were going
to schedule our lives together too, because everything came down to
schedules. Yeah, for sure.
You decided to leave the RCAF to pursue other
options. Can you tell us a little more about that?
I was kind of two years into my time at
405, and I was feeling like I wanted a different
challenge intellectually, I guess I wanted to
do something that I enjoyed and that I had a passion for.
And submarine warfare studying was like, not doing it for me.
And I was also a little bit worried that if I were to go to
school later years down the road, that none of my teachers would
remember me. So trying to get academic references to apply
for a program would be a little harder. So I
applied for a master's program while I was still flying.
And my first thought was that I wasn't going to get in. And then I got in. And
then my next consideration, because we still weren't married yet and we
still hadn't bought a house together or anything, was that I wanted to
get funding for sure from the military to do
the Masters and if I didn't, I was going to delay it. And then I got the funding,
which I wasn't expecting, so I actually
started my Master's during my check rides
for Moat. So, uh, the Aurora training course.
Moat is the Maritime operational air crew training
course.
That wasn't great timing.
Yeah, that's a really intense time in your training.
It wasn't the best timing I could have picked, but it worked out well.
And so I finished a Master's of Library and Information
Studies, which is like a total
180 from flying on the Aurora.
But it was something that I really enjoyed and found that I
really had a passion for. And originally when I had thought
about going to school, part of the goal was that
eventually I would need a Master's anyway if I were going to get
promoted. So I would do it now
and have it done out of the way. And then as I was going
to school, I realized I really enjoyed that a lot more
and I was getting a lot of more gratification out of
that subject area and that work than I would
be hunting submarines
or flying. I did really enjoy flying, but it just
wasn't making my brain work in the same way. And I really enjoyed doing my
masters. And then the next kind of wrench in the
plan, because I had expected that I would stay in probably until
my pension at least. The next wrench in the plan was that
COVID Hit and Paul and I actually had time together,
which never happens. So obviously we
got pregnant as many other
people did. Um, and so we had our son Owen
and I took a year off from maternity leave and Paul took
the first six months off with me. And we had such an amazing time as a family,
like being able to go on
trips together and do kind of whatever we wanted and everything.
And going back to work after maternity was exceptionally hard
for me. I had a very, very hard time and I realized that
I just wasn't passionate about it anymore. I didn't want
to be deployed on moment's notice. I didn't want
to go on exercises where I'd be away for weeks at a time because I was missing
so much from my son's life just being at work.
Um, and so when you combine that with the fact
that I wasn't really getting job satisfaction, I didn't get that same kind
of feel good feeling when I
was at work. It kind of became a no brainer for me to put it
in my release.
If you love the job, it makes those sacrifices
easier to bear. But if you found that it's become
something that you're not passionate about anymore, it's a lot harder to make
those sacrifices.
Yeah, exactly. And it was just getting to the point where it wasn't
worth the time and energy that we were spending on
it for me to stay in a job that I really wasn't
loving anymore. And the other big thing is we were both trying to
fly at this time. So Paul is, um, he
just got off of 413 Squadron for search and rescue, so
he's a Cormoron pilot, so his schedule was all over the
place. He'd have night shifts, he'd be on call on weekends, or
he'd be, um, out in the day, and he'd get a call out
ten minutes before shift ended, and then he'd be gone for next
8 hours or more. So then if you add on to
that with the Aurora hours of flying, like eight hour flights,
six or eight hour flights and getting pushed
for serviceability and that kind of stuff, it ended up that
we didn't have. Reliable childcare in terms
of we did have childcare for my son,
but asking them to watch him
from seven in the morning or six in the morning, even if I had
to go in early for a flight till whenever one
of us could get home just wasn't really a feasible
like. Especially not for a one year old that needs
that routine and getting to bed in their own house and
all that other stuff. So it became just like an absolute
nightmare trying to schedule Paul's work
schedules with my reintegration training and
my flights and simulators and everything, and it wasn't
working.
So it sounds like the writing was on the wall.
Yeah, definitely.
You mentioned a second career. Now that
you folks are here in Portage la Prairie,
you're having to sacrifice that career until you can
find childcare in order to support Paul in his flying career.
Do you find that difficult?
Yeah, we had kind of had the expectation that we would
be able to find at least part time childcare, and I would be able to kind of
easy my way into this new career and this new field, even if it
was part time, just to get my feet wet and see kind of what
area I wanted to work in. Because it's pretty like there's so
many different ways that I can apply my schooling.
So I was really looking forward to that, too. And
it also helps when you move to a new place to have
a cohort of people. So when we moved
here, the families here have all been amazing, but there's no,
like, I don't have any kind of job
satisfaction or meeting new people and working with new
people. It's all meeting with
the primary aim, basically, of making new friends
for me and for Owen, unlike other postings that we've
had, where I will get posted into my own job
and I'll make work friends and
acquaintances and whatever, there's none of that.
And so then it's not a good way to
start, I guess, because it's quite isolating. When
you don't have a job, you don't have this mechanism
that's built in to meet people. You really have to go out
of your comfort zone, set up play dates with random people that
you've never met and just hope they're cool.
Well, when you're posted somewhere and you're part of
the posting, like when you're in the military and you get
posted, you basically have an automatic set of friends
you're going to make. You're going to meet a bunch of people who, uh, you have at least
one big thing in common and you're
going to make like it's very easy.
Exactly. There's so much commonality between you and
someone else in the military that even if you
have never been posted the same place and you've never met before, you have those people that you
can talk to about things.
You have similar experiences.
Yeah, exactly. So you have that innate link between
you. But when we move, so Paul will go to
work and then it's just Owen and I hanging out and as
cool as that kid is, it's not
mentally stimulating.
Yeah.
Really? Right. So a lot of the stuff that I was craving
that I wasn't getting in my job
and that I really found through school, I'm not able to
continue to pursue because you can't leave a two
year old at home, I'm told that's a
bad idea. So we really need to like we
were waiting and we're on every waitlist.
Possible, so that's harder.
It wasn't a part of the posting that I was expecting because I was
just really excited for this next chapter because for me,
it meant a new career, a new chance
to contribute and to make
new friends and everything like that. That part wasn't scary,
but when you get there and then you don't have anything to
do, if you know what I mean. Obviously you have tons of stuff to
do because you're setting up your life in a new place, but you don't
have that career purpose. It makes it really
hard.
Yeah, for sure. A major challenge of being
a service couple is postings. You, uh,
were posted apart while engaged for three years. How did you make
that work?
A lot of FaceTime and
skype and things. So for the first year that we were apart, I
was in Winnipeg and Paul was in Labrador, so we had a
two hour time difference. So that
worked out a little bit better because, uh, by the time Paul was
having dinner, I was getting off work so we'd have a chance to
talk while I was working on dinner. And he was kind of
starting to wind down for the evening. So we'd usually plan to
call each other and even if we didn't sit and talk
for very long, we always kind of made an attempt to make sure that we
talked for at least ten minutes mhm a day, whether it was on the phone or
whether it was a video call. And then once it got posted
greenwood it made it a lot easier in some ways because we were in the
same time zone. So with that, again, we
would FaceTime every day. And you didn't even have to
be sitting there. Like, when you have a video call and you're like, really intent
that's all you're doing. We would just have FaceTime on while
we're doing stuff, while we're cooking, while we're reading, while I was doing
homework and studying, that kind of thing,
just so that we could talk as if we were in the same room. That
made a big deal. And then basically all of our
time off was spent visiting each
other. So, um, I think Paul,
between work and visiting me from Labrador, he got, like,
the Air Canada elite status for like,
50 legs in a year. It was just a
lot of visiting back and forth and just making that
conscious effort to spend time together. There was a couple of
times where we had overlapping exercises and the time
change would just be nuts. So at that point, we would just send each other
messages. And whenever you could answer, you could
answer. And those parts were kind of hard, especially
when you get used to being able to shock every
night. But it was just something that we both understood had to
happen. We both knew it wasn't going to last forever.
That was kind of it.
We did manage to see each other quite a bit at the
time. The Griffin Sims
were in Gagetown. Okay, I think they still are, but so
he would come down to Gagetown and then I'd be able to go out to New Brunswick or he'd
take extra leave and come to Nova Scotia. Anytime there
was a, uh, reason to come south
or for me to go north, it would work. So we did
manage to see each other more than I had expected to in the first little bit. But
when we were Winnipeg and was that
was pretty hard. I think we only saw each other two or three
times that year.
Yeah, that's tough. So you got
married. You both are in the same place,
but now you have to manage the schedules of two different
people who are flying and maintain a relationship. How did
you guys do that?
For the first little bit, it was almost like he wasn't there
because he came down to Greenwood. We bought a house,
but didn't get it till the summer. And he went on his cormorant course.
So I had his dog now, and.
My dog, which was in England, part.
Of it's in England. Yeah. So the Sims are in England. And that
week that they had Sims in England, the one week on course you can't take
leave was the week that we got possession of our house.
Oh, perfect.
So I moved both of us into our house
and after that, once he got back in the fall,
we basically have a shared calendar and we would write
out we started initially by writing it out on paper, like who was
flying what day and whatever, trying to figure out who would be making
dinner and who not. But Paul's schedule is changing
so much because at the time, they only had four first
officers for the Cormorant and one was usually gone for training.
So he was on call at least half the month,
if not more, depending on the month. So it ended
up just being that we didn't bother with writing down our schedules
anymore. We would just kind of have
like a talk in the morning or the night before, figure out who
was where, if we needed anyone to come and look at the dogs, if we were going to
be gone for a while and go from there. So once we
got into that rhythm, um, it made it a little bit easier because we
knew what days to expect that we would be gone,
what days we would have time together. And when we didn't have time together, we
made it very purposeful.
So we'd make sure we'd go out on dates together and
go exploring, do stuff that we enjoyed, uh, even if it
was just like watching a movie at home and having some popcorn.
And anytime that we had a chance
to take time off together, whether
it was like, okay, you get to leave early on a Friday, or
we requested overlapping Christmas leave to make sure that.
No one was like we were both.
Not on call for one chunk of time together, so we knew
we couldn't get called out, which was nice. Um, but yeah,
it just took a lot of coordination and last minute changes
because you can attest to the schedule
changes all the time on both parts. And
if you think it's going to be a quiet day and then all of a sudden Paul would
get a call out and he'd have to go fly up to northern Quebec,
then, well, guess him alone for dinner tonight, probably for breakfast
tomorrow, and he's going to be sleeping when I get home. And that was
probably the hardest part is that we didn't often have night
flights. And then when we did, it was scheduled, whereas he was
on know, half the nights. So he would
get called out and leave and he'd be gone for however many
hours it took for the search and then he'd be sleeping
the day. So we'd kind of lose a day with the night shift. So
that's one of the reasons too, we're happy to be here is there's no
more night flying except scheduled night flying. So that
helps.
So it sounds like a lot of scheduling and, um
flexibility.
Yeah, scheduling flexibility and like remembering to do cute
things.
Yeah, I was going to say intentionality.
Yeah. So one of the things we did while we were apart was
we'd send each other like, you know, the Hallmark Corny
love cards, like thinking of you and stuff. They always have
puns on them. Sometimes they're really cringe. Yeah.
So we would send those to each other all the time because we both like getting mail.
Who doesn't like getting mail? So then we'd start doing that. When we were
living together too, we would just leave them on the pillow or like if we're going away
on an exercise, I'd leave a couple scattered around the house kind of
thing. Just as a reminder. Right. It's a nice
way and it's better I find it's better in some ways than just
like a text. Because the text you get used to
texting back and forth and I don't feel like you get the
same kind of connection. Whereas if you're doing that a really cute
thing or you buy their favorite dessert. Paul would usually buy me
flowers and have them set up before he'd leave
on a course. So I'd have something nice in the kitchen to look at while he
was really you have to be cute
and a little disgusting about it
to really keep it happy. Yeah.
What's been the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
Not, um, being able to plan ever. Like
trying to plan family vacations or getting to see our families at
all. We've both been away from our families for twelve
years and not lived remotely
close to them. So trying to plan
times when we can go see family and we can take that, uh, time
together as well is
always frustrating because there are always constraints. Right. It could be nice for
you to go and see your brother's birthday, but
that's not going to line up with Christmas leave or summer block leave
or someone's on a course or whatever. So there's no
ability to do a kind of long term planning. The other thing now that we
have Owen too, is thinking of schooling
and those long term plans that people
that don't have to move as often, you get to
plan that. You get to decide, like, I really want my kid to go to
this school, or I really want them to be in
this sport or this club. And
you can have that reliability of, well,
we're going to live here for the next 15 years. So we know that they're going to be
in this school district. Yada. Uh, yada. Yada. For us,
we aren't even sure if we're going to be in this province when no one starts school.
And if we are, we don't know how many grades he's going to do.
Right. So it's such a crapshoot trying
to find and plan for your future.
That that's probably the most frustrating part. Because
every time you get settled too, like, you'll get settled and comfortable and you'll
be like, okay, maybe we could stay here and then something will come up
and you'll get posted. Or even if you don't get posted,
something will change that will affect those plans. So there's no
sense of long term stability in
the sense of plans. I mean, obviously there's long term stability
in Paul's career and some things remain
constant. Any kind of like family planning and stuff is
just a disaster.
Yeah, for sure. What has been the
best part of being a spouse to someone in the RCAF?
That's kind of a hard one, I think, on an
individual level, like, between Paul and I, I love
seeing him when he is really thrilled about
his job. So there's a couple times, like his first couple of rescues,
especially the first rescue that he got where
someone it wasn't a search, it was actually a rescue.
So he got someone got them to medical aid
and they survived. That was such a rush, I think, for
him. And seeing him so happy and so proud of that was really
awesome. And then the other thing is, as much
as we complain about postings, having a chance to live in
different places around the country has been awesome. We loved
Nova Scotia. Neither of us are from there. I'm from Alberta, Paul's from
BC. And we absolutely loved living in Nova
Scotia. And I never would have moved there. Like, what would make me move
there, right. There's nothing else that really kind of
pushes those boundaries and gives you those different kinds
of experiences, like being told
you have to go live there for three years or more. Right. So
I think that part's been the best, those two things. Yeah.
What has been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
One of our friends is going to be a little bitter about this. Not going to lie.
When Paul was up in Goose Bay flying on the Griffin,
it's quite a small squadron and everything. And they knew that I was also military
and also air crew. So when I came up to visit
the Christmas after we got engaged, his
Co approved me to go fly with them. So I
got to go in the back of the Griffin and we went up to the Mealy
Mountains, which is just outside of, um, Goose Bay,
and landed on a mountain and went and got up. So we've
got like a selfie of us together on a mountain.
That was pretty cool. And none of the other spouses could do it because they weren't
military. That's why one of our friends is going to be really
salty because for the longest time, we didn't
tell her it happened. Um, but yeah, I think being able
to see him work like that is super cool. And the helicopter
pilots get to do the mountain flying course in Penticton,
which is super cool. They just get to go learn how
to land on teeny tiny pieces of mountain and
do weird helicopter. But so I got to fly with
him to there, and they actually let me sit in the front seat
and fly a helicopter with him in the back
and just there to watch and whatever. It
was a lot of fun.
That's really cool.
Yeah. And we got to go scare a mountain goat.
It was great. It was a lot of fun.
Every time that course comes up in interviews, everyone
talks about how incredible it is. That's like the best
flying you'll do in your life.
Yeah, it's unreal. And they have these little helicopters. They remind me of like
little sports cars because they're just like
the cockpit bubble basically and the rotor
plates in the tail and then you just go they were doing like
canyon runs and stuff. It's definitely
super cool. And that company is so
professional and so nice. And
everyone that I talked to, they just rant about that course
because they're like, everything's so smooth, everything's so well planned.
We get to do such cool flying. Yeah, it
was cool. It was a good chance. Cool.
So for a final question, I want you to think
about a young pilot or a young air
crew member. What piece of advice would you give
them to help them have a successful family
life?
I think you really need to be purposeful about
your work life balance. That's something that is
really easy to ignore. Especially when you're young
and either single or kind of newly married. When you're
in that young family stage where maybe you don't have kids yet, maybe you're thinking
about it, maybe you aren't thinking about it. But you're newly married
because you're new and gung ho and usually you're
during an upgrade process or working
towards your goals. It's really easy to
get sucked into work is
life, mhm, which it isn't.
Not to be harsh, but when you retire, the
RCAF is going to continue on without you. Right.
You are not the make and break piece of the entire organization.
So you need to take time for family that you're never going
to get back. Those are things you really need to focus on. And
especially with kids too. When you start to have kids, take the
time off. A lot of people I know
didn't take parental leave even though they're entitled to it and they can
because they wanted to continue on with their flying. But the
planes are going to be there when you get back. Yeah, right. I agree.
It's totally okay to love your job and to be passionate about it and
to volunteer for things and volunteer out for trips. But
you have to check in with your partner and make sure that they're not
missing you. Right. Like, they're going to miss you a little bit, but if they feel
like they're missing huge chunks of your life, take some
time. Take some time to focus on that. And also
remember that they're going to be the ones that are sticking around with
you and kids or your early years
of marriage. You're not going to get those back. So make the most
of them and you can still enjoy your job, and then you have
a much better, ideally healthier
relationship when you come out of it at the end.
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for taking the time
out of your busy day. I, uh, know you're super busy with Owen and everything else
in life and getting settled in this new place, so thank you so much.
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.
Our final guest today is my very good friend, Lindsay
Olson. Welcome to the show, Lindsay.
Thanks for having me, Brian.
So, Lindsay, can you start by quickly telling us about
yourself?
So I grew up in a small
town called Portal Bernie on Vancouver
Island, BC. I
moved to Victoria, BC, which is
about two and a half hours from my hometown,
just after graduation. And I
attended Camosin College.
And I was one of those people that didn't
know what I wanted to do with my life. So I
took a one year certificate
program and office administration,
and was hired by the
BC government shortly after. I worked for the
BC government for ten years,
uh, and held five different positions. And
during my time with government, I discovered
that I have a knack for writing.
And so that sort of propelled my career
forward to where I am today as the
Director of Communications for Southern Health Sante Sid,
which is the Southern Health Authority here in
Manitoba. I was
a dancer growing up. I have three children,
and of course, I'm married to Nils, who is
a maritime helicopter pilot by
trade and currently an instructor here, uh, at
three CFFTS in Portugal
Prairie, Manitoba.
Awesome. So how did you and Nils meet each
other?
We met through Plenty of Fish,
which is an online
dating platform, or it was a very popular
online dating platform back when we m met twelve
years ago. I have no idea if it still.
Exists, but it's definitely one of the originals.
Yeah, it was very common back
then.
Yeah. Once you guys started talking
on Plenty of Fish and you met him,
what was your initial thought when it came to dating someone in the
RCAF?
So that actually prompts a bit of a funny story.
So, prior to meeting Nils through Plenty Of
Fish, I had been on a date with a Navy
guy who explained in great detail
what deployments look like and all
the comings and goings. And I thought to myself,
nope, I have no interest in that. Why
would I want to be with someone who's gone most of the time?
So I just wanted no part of that.
And fast forward to meeting
Nils. He was actually very
strategic about not mentioning that he worked
in the military. He
vaguely mentioned that he worked in aviation and
eventually disclosed that he was a pilot.
And, uh, it was actually the day that we were
supposed to meet that he had. Mentioned that he was
on a course. And that triggered something. I
realized that the course that he
was on was the same course that this Navy guy had been
on. And I just thought, oh my God, he works in the
military. And so I confronted him
by text. And you know, when
know texting, there's those three dots and then pause
and then three dots. And so that went on for like five
minutes.
He eventually just said yes. And
I had this out of body.
Experience where I thought, okay, I
have 20 minutes before I need to catch a bus to meet this
guy. And I really like him. I can tell
that we have chemistry. I'm either
going to get on that bus and meet him
and accept whatever comes next, knowing
that he has the potential to change the
course of my life forever, or
I run for the hills.
Right.
So it came down to five minutes and I thought to myself,
okay, I'm just going to run for this bus. If I catch
the bus, I'm going to accept whatever comes next.
If I miss the bus, then we were never meant
to meet. So obviously I caught that bus
and.
The rest is history.
That's so funny. I'm actually crying
from this story.
I mean, it did change the course of my life.
Right.
You just know that, uh, having
enough background on what military life was like,
just from hearing from other people that I had been
on dates with, I just knew that whatever plans
you have in life, they will change.
Yeah, for sure.
If you're in a relationship with someone who's in the
military.
Yeah, that's absolutely true. As much as we
live in a world now where
more and more rightly. So both
people's careers are important, uh, we try to strive for equal
importance. The truth is, if one person's in the
military, everyone else in the family's life revolves around
the demands of that job. It's just the way it has to be.
Absolutely.
So you mentioned that you work as Director of communications for
Manitoba Southern Health. And you and Nils have three
kids. How have you found balancing employment,
parenthood, and being married to an RCAF pilot?
It can be very challenging. Some days
are fairly routine and other
days require extensive planning and
coordination. When Nils
is on a cross country, we call
those survival days. Those are the
days when we let the laundry pile up and the house
get dirty and you just prioritize what needs to
happen. And what needs to happen is getting
kids to school and daycare and work
and then dinner extracurricular. And we
are not above asking for help. We learned very
early on that we are fortunate to have
a robust family
military network here. I mean, I
can't even count on I don't have enough hands to count. How
many times you and Melissa alone have
helped our family in times of need.
And that's just one of many families that
steps up to the plate to help us.
Yeah, we're so fortunate here in
Portagello Prairie at the school because
people have the extra bandwidth to help each other.
And I found that this place has been really great
for almost recuperating from the
crazy life of operational flying, and
we can all help each other out a little more. And it's been really nice.
I couldn't agree more, Brian. It's been an incredible experience.
So going back to when you met, very shortly
after you met nils left for his operational training
unit to follow it up. He was quickly sent away on a
nine and a half month sale. What was that like for
you?
It was a big eye opener. You don't realize how
long nine and a half months is until you're in the thick of
it. And during that time, I had a
lot of time to reflect on what our
life might look like moving forward. So we
did not have kids at that time. And I
just kept thinking to myself, this is only the
beginning. This is going to get more challenging
as time goes on. What will this look like with
kids? There was a lot of reflection that
happened during that time, so it was
tough, but I think I always knew that it could
get tougher. And so I kind of was
thankful for the position that I was in and that I
did not have kids and that I was able to carry
on with my job no problem while he was away.
But it must have been really difficult because how long had you been
together before he went to the, uh,
East Coast to get trained on the Seeking?
We had only been together for two months before
he left. And leading up to his
departure for seeking training, he
just kept mentioning that he was going to go on a
training course and it would be a couple of weeks,
and then it was a couple of months. And then, um,
true story is that it was seven months, but he just didn't
want to lose me, and he wanted to
ease me into the idea that he would be coming
and going frequently, which is exactly what
happened.
And then he came back. And how long was it before he left on that
sale?
Two weeks.
Two weeks. So you were together again for two weeks and then gone
for nine and a half months?
He had a few deployments prior to that big
okay. Yeah, he had, uh, like a two month and a four
month, and he was always home for a couple of
weeks in between. And then, of course,
that long sale. And after he came back, we got
married.
Yeah. Wow. So that's a
lot of time apart. How did you two
keep things going during those times?
Communication was key. We had previously
established really strong communication
skills prior to his leaving
and his time in Halifax training
really solidified, uh, the importance of
connecting every day in whatever means were
available to us. So that, uh,
texting, FaceTime, emails. We
even wrote letters, postcards. Oh, my gosh, I
think I got a postcard. I have, like, a box
full of letters and postcards from that time.
I should take that out sometime.
Yeah, you should.
Yeah.
We made a point of having some
form of connection every day, even if it
was, hi, thinking of you.
I'll talk to you soon.
So those deployments kept coming, and Nils sailed or
deployed on ships a total of five times while you've been together.
Can you tell us about some of those experiences?
When I look back on,
uh, the time of deployments, there's
one deployment in particular that sticks
out to me as being especially
hard, and that was the last deployment he
was on before we got posted to Portage La Perry,
Manitoba. It was a five
month sale. Our first child was
not even one, and I was pregnant with our
second child. So I was in the process
of returning to work following
Matt leave, and our daughter was going to
daycare for the first time ever. So
there was a lot of change happening. And
we quickly discovered, or I quickly discovered
that when your child goes to daycare for the first
time ever, they catch every virus
known to man. So our daughter
was just constantly sick,
and nothing could have prepared me for that
experience. I
ended up burning all of my vacation days
within the first two months. So I had to have a
really awkward conversation with my boss about my
situation being essentially a
single parent at the time, and obviously
not being able to send our daughter to
daycare. So I found that really challenging
and just a huge eye opener. I didn't realize that
she would be sick so often.
She also suffered from reoccurring
ear infections, but we didn't know that they were ear
infections at the time. So she would get sick, and
then she would get really sick. And
so there would be lots of
sleepless nights and me trying to
work with her home during the day while she
was extremely, extremely ill
and frequently.
On three occasions, uh, she was admitted to
the hospital because of how sick she
was. So you can imagine how stressful
that would have been as a first time
parent and trying to maintain a full time
job and just not having that support
person. You really lean on your other half in those
times, especially making tough parenting
decisions. So it was just
incredibly challenging. And the whole five months is just a blur
for me. There was one day in particular
that sticks out in my mind. I ended
up contracting gastro.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
So I had one of those nights where I was up all
night puking. And I remember waking up the
next morning to this knock at
our front door, and I hopped over to the
door, and I answered the door, and it was my neighbor. And
she just took one look at me and was like, oh, my
gosh. You're not okay. She's like, I'm coming
in. I'm going to help you. You need my help.
I'm not taking no for an answer. And she
just packed a bag, and she took my daughter for the day,
and she said, you need to sleep. You go to
bed. And I remember waking up at 06:00 p.m..
That day. I slept the entire day, and I
woke up at 06:00 p.m.. And my
neighbor was sitting at our dinner table.
Feeding our daughter dinner,
and I just cried.
I was just oh, my God. I didn't realize how much I needed
help, and I don't think anything could have prepared
me for what was to come.
Right.
And from that day forward, she showed up
every day.
What a great neighbor.
Yeah.
Honestly, my takeaway from that experience
was, you, uh, need a person or
people. You need a community that can help
you when your spouse is deployed, especially when you
have children. Nobody can or should
have to do it alone.
Yeah. If you don't have kids, it can be very
lonely. And obviously, if you do have
kids, it can be incredibly overwhelming.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
And just the sheer I did not
prepare for
what was required to keep
my head above water during that time.
I don't know why we did not
realize that simple tasks like
grocery shopping and cutting the
grass and doing laundry, walking the
dog, there are not enough hours in the day
to do all those things and be a parent
to a toddler and work a full time job. So
we learned very early on that you need help or you
need hired help. And those are
survival days. Right. You got to do whatever it takes
to get through them and to give yourself some grace to not
expect that you can possibly do all
those things. You have to get help.
And it's not forever. It's just that period of time
when you need to accept all the help that comes your way.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think an important thing to remember,
too, you keep listing off having a kid and
working and trying to keep everything going by yourself. And
you were pregnant.
Yeah, I was very pregnant. Very
pregnant with our second child.
So I was like, that's exhausting.
It was so exhausting.
Yeah.
Having a sick toddler, and
those were some really tough days.
I really like what you said about the importance of
help, and I think that just highlights
how important it is to have a support network to make sure
that before your partner is
deployed, to make sure that you have that
support network in place, you have those people you can count
on.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh. You need people and
you need to know when you've
reached your limits. And I learned that
very early on. You're not doing yourself or
your family any favors. If your glass is empty,
if your basic human needs are not being met,
then you need to do something about it.
Yeah, 100%. What has been
the hardest part of being a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
It's all the unknowns. There's always a
curveball. You don't know what it is or when it's coming.
It could be something as simple
as breakdown. Um, during a cross
country, your spouse is supposed to be home
in two days. You've planned accordingly and
then they break down and they're gone for a week.
And I mean, this
just really solidifies that need for a support
network and just knowing when
to let some things go. Like maybe you're not going
to get to hockey practice this week
or you're not going to make that
lasagna. Instead you're going to get a takeout pizza or
whatever.
It's just flexibility.
Honestly, you have to be so
flexible when you're a military family
and when you're married to a pilot
in the RCAF. Every day
has its challenges and there's just so many
unknowns.
Mhm and those are just the small things. On top of that, you've
got the big things like postings and
all kinds of things that can unexpectedly change
your life in huge ways.
Oh yeah. It can be pretty overwhelming when you
think about what's next and just
that feeling of just not knowing. I mean, you
can have all the plans in the world and ultimately
that decision about where you're going next isn't
always up to you. Mhm so that's a lot to
accept.
Yeah. How do you deal with those unknowns?
I think our move to Portage la Prairie
is a good example of I was
very, very nervous about that move. I had
never been to Manitoba. It was a
lot of unknown for me, leaving
the only place I'd ever known, which was Vancouver
Island, BC. I grew up there and so
that was a really tough move for me.
But I quickly realized that
were many perks to
moving out of that comfort zone and
establishing friendships and
relationships with other military families.
Because we didn't have that in Victoria, as
I had previously mentioned, we really didn't have a support
network there. But here in Portugal Prairie, it's a
really small community, so you don't really have a choice.
Like you make those connections right away. Mhm and
it's been a very positive experience for me. So I
think that that has sort of changed my
thought pattern on postings and
just knowing that wherever
we go next, it's going to be okay, you're going to make
a connection. And if you don't, you have all these prior
connections and they're going to help you guide your way
and you're going to fall back on those experiences and realize
that you didn't have to survive that.
You embraced it, you enjoyed it, you made
friendships, you embraced that community.
You put yourself out there, you get involved. It can
be whatever experience you want and you have to
make the best of the hand that you're dealt.
What's been the best part of being a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
I think it just goes back to those connections,
honestly. We've made lifelong friendships here
that I have no doubt that we will continue to stay
in touch. And that level of
friendship just goes so much beyond the average
friendship. It's a family. And even your own
family doesn't understand you like another
military family does. It's impossible to
explain. These are people that are in the same
walk of life as you and they know exactly where you're
coming from. It's just a bond that it's an
honor to be able to make those bonds and
establish those friendships. So that's a huge positive.
Yeah, I think we all have that shared
experience of this lifestyle and those life
experiences. And even though we come especially at a
school, from like a varied background of
fleets and locations, we all understand the life
and we can all understand the hardships that each other
are going through and kind of help each other through
them.
Yes, it is a lifestyle.
What's been your coolest experience as a spouse to someone in the
RCAF?
The coolest experience I've had to date
would be mountain flying with
Nils in the Okanagan. So I actually got to
fly that helicopter, which was equally
thrilling and terrifying.
So I recognized that that was a really unique
experience that I got through
Nils being a helicopter
pilot.
That's really cool. It was you and Nils and you got a chance to fly the
helicopter?
I did, yeah. He was sitting in the back and I got to sit in the front
and actually fly the helicopter.
Oh, with the instructor?
Yeah, with the instructor. Yeah, of course.
That's so cool, though.
They're very intentional about getting the
spouse in the front seat for a 2030
minutes flight. And I think they are very
aware of the impact that that has
because leading to that point, it's just training,
training, deployments. And then all of
a sudden, there's just 30 minutes in
your life where you get to be there
experiencing just a piece of
what they go through and the thrill
and also the terror
flying in the mountains. I'm sure it's nothing that
compares to what our spouses go through and
when they're operational, but it really is a life changing
experience.
It is really cool when you have a chance to bring your family
flying because you have
a concept in your head of like, yeah, well, they're a
pilot, they fly airplanes, they fly helicopters. That's what
they do. But to actually have people come
and see it and feel what it's
like and hear the noise and uh, just
be present and be part of. It is such a cool experience. It really makes
it real.
I think it is an experience. There's no better
way to put it.
So I want you to think about, for example, the young
pilots that we have, uh, here at the school. What piece of
advice would you give to a young pilot to help them have a successful
family life?
So, two things come to mind. The first one
being that communication
and maintaining connection with your family
is so critical.
No matter where you are, it's so.
Important to use whatever means are available to you to
stay connected with your family. Even if all you have
time for is a quick
text or email. Hi, I'm thinking
of you. I'm okay. How are you
guys? Love you all, talk to you soon.
I mean, that's everything. It's everything to your family
to hear from you. Even when you're in different time
zones and it's hard to connect, it's
just nice to know that that other person,
your other half is out there thinking of you.
Both of you are not in
ideal situations. You're both going through
tough times or having tough days.
So it's important on
both parts to.
Maintain that connection in whatever way possible.
And especially for the kids. We are very
intentional when Nils is away,
even if it's just overnight, to do a quick FaceTime
with the kids and say goodnight to them so that
they know that wherever he is in the world, he
will always take time to connect
with them. The second thing
is to help your family foster a
connection with another
family, whether that be military or
just another family in the community. You need
to have a support network and it's so
critical to help your family foster that
connection and just to know that they have
that support system because something
always comes up. You will always need to fall back
on that support system and just knowing that
you have that one other person or
family that can help you. It's a live or
die situation. Honestly, you can't survive
without it. It takes a, uh, village to raise
a child and it takes a robust
family military network to raise
a, uh, military family.
Yeah, I agree with that completely.
So those are the two pieces of advice
I have.
Um, awesome. Well, Lindsay, that does it for this
interview. I just want to thank you so much. I know you're extremely busy
and I really appreciate you taking the time to be here and answer a
few questions.
So happy to be here. Brian, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you. All right, that's going to wrap up our
episode on Military Family Appreciation Day. I
hope you all enjoyed getting a bit of the spouse
perspective. For our next episode, we sat down with
Greg Gerling to talk about his time in Afghanistan on
the Ch 146. Griffin listeners will remember
Greg from our Christmas episode from last year. He's
got some very exciting stories. You don't want to miss it.
Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard on the
show? Or would you or someone you know make a great guest?
Reach out to us at
thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com
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It engineer shut down all four. Shutting
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