By Scott Taylor
Last Monday the Royal Canadian Air Force issued a brief and bizarre press release. The official missive advised the media that a Change of Command ceremony scheduled for the following day at CFB Bagotville was being delayed.
The statement from RCAF Commander Lt-Gen Eric Kenny specified that military investigators were looking into comments that were allegedly made during a meeting wherein attendees were choosing the call-signs (aka nicknames) for fighter pilots.
“On June 22, at 4 Wing Cold Lake, a call-sign review board, where call-signs are assigned to members associated with the fighter community, took place in a small group social setting” Kenny stated. “An investigation was launched into statements made during this activity and remains ongoing. The investigation will examine actions of those involved during the call-sign review board.”
The DND later confirmed that there had been multiple RCAF officers present at the call-sign review board. What is still not clear is what remarks or offending statements were allegedly uttered.
Given the enormous popularity of the recently released Top Gun movie sequel, many young Canadians are now well aware of the importance of call-signs within the elite fighter pilot community.
For those of my generation, we were taught that same lesson when Tom Cruise starred in the original Top Gun release back in 1986.
Even back in those far less politically-correct times, when females were not allowed to fly fighters, the call-signs seemed rather innocuous, such as Maverick, Goose and Ice Man.
Ditto for the Top Gun sequel, which pointedly includes a female as one of the best pilots in the movie, with the call-sign “Phoenix”.
The concept of fighter pilot call-signs was adapted by the RCAF many years ago.
Again as with the Top Gun characters, most of these monikers are rooted in light humoured camaraderie.
For instance I can recall asking former Chief of Defence Staff General Tom Lawson how he came to acquire his call-sign “Shadow.” It turned out that this had nothing to do with his piloting skills allowing him to closely follow an intended target. Instead, it reflected the fact he had an unusually rapid growth rate of facial hair. But I digress.
The process of choosing the call-sign attributed to each fighter pilot takes place at unit social gatherings. The individual’s peers relate anecdotes and then provide suggested suitable call-signs. The other pilots then vote on the call-sign and it becomes ‘official.’ One presumes the consumption of alcohol occurs during these events.
Given that no clarifying details have been released regarding the Cold Lake incident, we can only speculate that whatever was said must have been incredibly offensive.
So much so, that on the eve of a Change of Command ceremony, the RCAF would publicly put the promotion of a senior officer on hold.
What is truly stunning is that whoever made the alleged offending remarks or failed to call them into question, did so in the current socially aware climate.
By this I mean how could this individual not have been aware of the fact that the Canadian Armed Forces have been embroiled in a continuous crap-storm of sexual misconduct scandals for the past 19 months?
We cannot know that the alleged statements made at the call-sign review board were sexual in nature, but it has been the entire culture of the CAF that has been thrust under the media microscope.
Many of those senior leaders that have been embroiled in these scandals are facing allegations that date back ten, twenty and even thirty years ago.
That said, it is almost beyond comprehension that under the present glaring media spotlight, that any senior officer would not be fully cognizant of possible consequences.
One would think that most of our senior military commanders would be afraid to utter even a compliment to a colleague if it could possibly be misconstrued as sexist.
Yet somehow, at a meeting involving multiple RCAF officers, comments were made that, by their nature have sparked a police investigation.
Let’s hope that the results of this investigation shed some light on the matter.
