Flying Seven

Margaret Fane, Western Canada’s First Commercial Aviatrix

by Eve Lazarus on December 2, 2022

December 7 is International Civil Aviation Day. It’s a great excuse to write about Margaret (Fane) Rutledge (1914-2004), founder of the Flying Seven and one of the country’s first female pilots.

Edmonton:

Margaret Fane was born to an Edmonton family who were obsessed with making things move. Her father, William Fane, began by repairing carriages, and by 1928 owned what was reputedly the “largest automobile repair plant in the west.” He was the founding member of the Edmonton Glider Club, and in 1933, hand built a glider in his shop. That same year, 19-year-old Margaret, the second oldest of six, received her private pilot’s licence #1317 and became the only female member of the Edmonton Aero Club.

The family moved to Vancouver in 1935, and Margaret was soon proficient in flying a Cirrus Moth, a Gypsy Moth, an American Eagle, an Alexander Eaglerock and a seaplane.

Meets Amelia Earhart:

Margaret didn’t talk much about herself, says her niece Pamela Fane, the family’s historian. “She said very little about her history except the odd time when something came up. One day my husband and I were with Margaret and her husband Keith talking about where Amelia Earhart had put her aircraft down (in 1937),” says Pamela. “Margaret just shook her head and said: ‘I told her not to go’. We knew that she knew her but we didn’t know that she knew her that well.”

Twenty-one-year-old Margaret had met Amelia Earhart when she flew down to the Burbank Airport in 1935. She was hoping to form a Canadian chapter of the famous Ninety-Nines—an American organization for women pilots.

The Flying Seven:

There weren’t enough experienced Canadian pilots to form a chapter, but Margaret and the older Amelia became friends and stayed in touch, and Margaret formed the Flying Seven—which included Rolie Moore, Jean Pike, Tosca Trasolini, Alma Gilbert, Betsy Flaherty and Elianne Roberge.

Pamela grew up in Montreal and moved to Vancouver in 1969, spending that summer and fall with her aunt Margaret and uncle Keith, a helicopter engineer. “On July 20, my uncle moved the black and white television to the pool deck and set up chairs,” says Pamela. “There were three of us and my parents watching the landing on the moon. That was pretty amazing—an aviation pioneer watching what was unthinkable at the time when she obtained her pilot licence.”

Ginger Coote Airways:

In the 1930s, even the smallest of airlines refused to hire women pilots, so Margaret obtaineded her commercial radio operator’s licence and stayed in the industry. Ginger Coote hired her as a dispatcher, and Margaret became the world’s first female radio operator. Keith Rutledge told a story of the time when Coote had been drinking heavily and fell off the float of a plane. Margaret saved him from drowning.

After Ginger Coote Airways was folded into Canadian Pacific, Grant McConachie hired Margaret as his head of reservations. She stayed for over 20 years.

Pamela says Margaret and Keith frequently entertained and the food was always beautifully presented in silver serving dishes, crystal bowls with sterling silver cutlery. “Margaret could whip up a gorgeous dinner in no time flat,” says Pamela. “The guests had no idea they were eating food prepared from frozen packages and cans.”

Tosca Trasolini and the Flying Seven
Rolie Moore and the Flying Seven
The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Tags Alma Gilbert, Amelia Earhart, Betsy Flaherty, Edmonton Aero Club, Edmonton Glider Club, Elianne Roberge, Flying Seven, Jean Pike, Keith Rutledge, Margaret Fane, Margaret Rutledge, Ninety-Nines, Rolie Moore, Tosca Trasolini, William Fane

Rolie Moore, the Flying Seven and Burnaby’s Hart House Restaurant

by Eve Lazarus on April 30, 2022

Rolie Moore grew up in Burnaby’s Hart House and became the president of the Flying Seven, Canada’s first all female pilot club

George Garrett, at the back of Hart House, April 2022. Eve Lazarus photo

I had the pleasure of having lunch with the delightful George Garrett at Hart House last week, a restaurant I’ve wanted to visit ever since I first heard that one of its inhabitants was the amazing Rolie Moore.

Rosalie (Rolie) Moore was born in 1912, the same year that Hart House was built as a summer home for land developer Frederick Hart and his wife Alice (it was called Avalon then). The Moore’s bought the house in 1916, and Ethel Moore turned much of the three-acre property into iris gardens.

Plaque in need of some love outside Hart House, April 2022. Eve Lazarus photo

Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts:

Rolie graduated from the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts in 1931. She had six siblings, and while her love of art was encouraged, her obsession with flying was not. She secretly took her first flying lesson in January 1935 in a Gipsy Moth CF-AAB, made her first solo flight in April, and had her pilot’s licence that October.

Rolie drove a Studebaker convertible that she called the Flying Omlet. Courtesy Violet Kinnear via Sim Publishing

The Flying Seven:

She was one of the founding members of the Flying Seven and by 1939 she was the group’s president, had her commercial pilot’s licence, won the Webster Trophy in Edmonton, and in August of that year, was one of the “girl” pilots who performed at the airshow for the opening of the Kamloops Airport. She closed out the exhibition with a stunt performance for the 4,000 people in attendance.

Tosca Trasolini, Rolie Moore (in plane) and Elianne Roberge at the opening of Kamloops Airport in 1939. Vancouver Sun, August 5, 1939.

Besides Rolie, the Flying Seven included Margaret Fane, Tosca Trasolini, Jean Pike, Betsy Flaherty, Alma Gilbert and Elianne Roberge. In 1936, the women took turns flying over Vancouver in 25-minute stints in two Fairchilds, a Golden Eagle, two Fleets, and two Gipsy Moths. They were trying to make a point, they said, that a woman’s place was in the air.

When war broke out they tried to enlist in the Canadian Air Force but were rejected because they were women. Instead, they sponsored the first aerial training centre for women in Canada, taught flying theory and parachute-packing and sent out their grads to work at Boeing’s Seattle plant and in aircraft factories across Canada.

Rolie Moore:

Rolie married John Henry Desmond Barrett, a civil engineer, in December 1939. They had Desmond two years later, and sadly Barrett was killed in Belgium in 1944. Now a widow with a young son to support, Rolie became Canada’s first charter pilot and worked for Associated Air Taxi and the BC Aero Club. She married Dennis Pierce, also a pilot in 1949.

With thanks to Gary Moonie who sent this picture of the logo found on a WWII Canadian Military Pattern army truck at Sooke BC

The Moore’s owned “Rosedale Gardens” until 1950. The City of Burnaby bought the property in 1979 and designated it as a heritage site in 1992. It’s been a restaurant since 1988.

Rosedale/Hart House, 1925. Courtesy Burnaby Historical Society

In her later life, Rolie raised horses in the Fraser Valley. She died in 1999 at age 86. According to “Life with the Moores,” there was a plane watcher’s bench installed with her name in 2000 at the Pitt Meadows Airport. If you live out that way and have a photo, please send it to me so I can add it to the blog.

The Flying Seven in 1936. Courtesy Vancouver Archives

Pride, Harry. Life with the Moores of Hart House : pioneer days on Burnaby’s Deer Lake, 2002, Burnaby
Render, Shirley. No Place for a Lady, the story of Canadian Woman pilots 1928-1992
Sim-publishing.com

Tags Alice Hart, Alma Gilbert, Betsy Flaherty, Dennis Pierce, Desmond Barrett, Elianne Roberge, Ethel Moore, Flying Seven, Frederick Hart, Hart House, Jean Pike, John Barrett, Margaret Fane, Rolie Moore, Rosalie Ethel Moore, Tosca Trasolini, Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts

The Cambie Street Rocket Ship

by Eve Lazarus on January 1, 2021

The rocket ship at the southwest end of the Cambie Street Bridge is a replica of one built in 1938 for the annual PNE parade.

Story from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

The original rocket ship at Vancouver Airport, 1947. CVA 1376-360

Cambie Street Bridge:

Have you ever wondered why there is a snazzy-looking rocket ship at the southwest end of the Cambie Street Bridge? It was built for Expo 86, then shifted by helicopter to its current site after the fair ended. It’s actually a replica of a rocket ship that was designed by Lew Parry and built for the Sheet Metal Workers Local 280 as a float in the 1938 PNE parade.

The original rocket ship in the 1938 PNE parade being pulled by two men on a tractor. Photo by J.E. Hughes of Victoria.

After Vancouver Exposed came out last Fall, Paul Hancock sent me a photo that his uncle had taken of the PNE parade (above). Thanks to Tom Carter for pinpointing the location at the northeast corner of Georgia Street looking down Howe Street.

Built by Sheet Metal Workers:

According to a story in the Province dated August 25, 1938j, the original rocket ship was built through the efforts of 50 members of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association in several city shops. It weighed “half a ton, is 18 feet long, 13 feet high and nine feet wide and made of tin, iron and copper.”

Sheet Metal Workers’ rocket designed by Lew Parry in the 1938 PNE parade. CVA 775-195

The float was awarded the grand prize. Lew Parry, who became a highly regarded film producer, also designed a float for the Sheet Metal Workers’ in 1936 called “The Modern Aim,” which also won the grand prize at the PNE that year.

The rocket ship has lived at the south end of the Cambie Street bridge since 1986. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020

VIA:

The original streamlined rocket ship sat at the Vancouver Air Terminal until 1972, when its rusting frame was thrown into the landfill. The replica was made using old photos of the original and advice from Parry, who turned 80 as Vancouver celebrated its centennial.

This replica is made of hardier stuff than its predecessor—stainless steel and brass which will hopefully see it through another 100 years.

You might also want to make a note on your calendar that a Centennial Time Capsule buried at the base of the rocket, is scheduled to be dug up and opened in 2036. According to the CoV website “it includes items such as an Expo 86 passport with stamps of all the pavilions and recorded messages from local celebrities and many other things.”

With thanks to Donna Sacuta of the BC Labour Heritage Centre

The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship

Tags Cambie Street Rocket Ship, Flying Seven, Lew Parry, Neon Products, Sheet Metal Workers Local 280

The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship

by Eve Lazarus on January 10, 2020

The Flying Seven formed in 1935 and were Vancouver’s all-female aviators’ club

The Flying Seven at YVR ca.1940. Photo CVA 371-987

Vancouver’s aviatrices:

This is one of my favourite photos. It ran with a story in Sensational Vancouver and shows six members of the Flying Seven posed in front of the rocket ship at Vancouver International Airport. The Flying Seven were Vancouver’s all-female aviators’ club. Tosca Trasolini—second from the right—was the youngest member at just 29 in this 1940 photo. The others were Margaret (Fane) Rutledge, Rolie Moore, Jean Pike, Betsy Flaherty, Alma Gilbert and Elianne Roberge.

The club formed in 1935 after Margaret Rutledge flew to California to meet with Amelia Earhart, president of the Ninety-Nines—an American organization for women pilots. There weren’t enough experienced Canadian pilots to form a chapter, so the Canadian women started their own.

Flying Flappers:

Newspaper editors called them the “Sweethearts of the Air,” “flying flappers” and “angels,” defying what a Chatelaine article had asked a few years earlier: “Are women strong enough to fly with safety? Are they fitted temperamentally to operate aircraft.” The women flew Fairchilds, Golden Eagles, Fleets and Gypsy Moths—they said that a woman’s place was in the air. Fane and Roberge held their commercial pilots’ licence.

The members of the Flying Seven attended an airshow sponsored by the Vancouver Junior Board of Trade in 1936. “They stopped us at the gate and told us we couldn’t go in,” Trasolini later told the Vancouver Sun’s Stuart Keate. “We were just as interested in the different machines as a lot of men around the place. But don’t worry, we made it.”

The enterprising Trasolini got hold of an admittance ticket, had a look around and one by one the other six women went in to see the aircraft.

Strathcona-born Trasolini, told Keate that she’d always “been crazy to fly” she just didn’t have enough money to do it until she got a job as Angelo Branca’s legal secretary.

Italian Heritage Month – meet the East End’s Angelo Branca

by Eve Lazarus on June 17, 2017

One of the best parts about messing around with history, especially criminal history, is digging up connections. Angelo Branca appears as a Canadian middleweight boxing champion in the 1930s, and as the scrappy East End (Strathcona) lawyer and defender of madams and bookies in At Home with History.

In Sensational Vancouver, he is defence attorney to notorious brothel owner Joe Celona during the Tupper Royal Commission into police corruption. In another chapter, he pops up as a patron of former VPD detective Joe Ricci’s West Coast Central Club, and in another, he is boss and close friend to Tosca Trasolini a pilot and member of the Flying Seven, Canada’s first all-female aviator club.

In Blood, Sweat, and Fear, Branca swaps sides in 1935 and defends 17 VPD officers suspended for corruption. Every one of them got their job back. Ten years later he is defending a soldier accused of murdering a young woman in English Bay in 1945. It’s one of the few cases he loses in his career.

During his career, Branca defended 63 people on murder charges, and only one, Domenico Nassa, received the death penalty in 1928. Branca told his biographer that he had no quibble with that decision, but he didn’t think the soldier deserved to hang, and he fought the verdict all the way to the British Columbia Court of Appeal. He often took on pro bono cases.

Angelo Branca with client Joe Celona. Province photo, 1955.

Branca was born in 1903 and grew up at 343 Prior Street with parents Teresa and Filippo, two brothers John and Joseph and sister Anne. Filippo ran the grocery store on Main Street and he and Peter Tosi and Sam Minichiello were the three biggest importers of California grapes in the area.

West Coast Central Club, Main Street, ca.1950. Joe Ricci far left. Photo courtesy Louise Ricci

My favourite story comes from Ray Culos whose grandfather was Sam Minichiello, and says that the joke in the neighbourhood was that wine was a family affair. Filippo would sell the grapes to the bootleggers, his son John, a detective with the dry-squad would arrest them, and his other son, Angelo, would get them off in court.

The Canadian Lawyer magazine wrote that Branca was the most famous criminal defense lawyer in Canada’s history. In 1963, he became a Supreme Court judge. Branca died in 1984.

To read more about his remarkable life, check out:

Vincent Moore’s book: Gladiator of the Courts, Douglas and McIntyre, 1981

Ray Culos’s website

Tags Angelo Branca, Domenico Nassa, Flying Seven, Joe Celona, Joe Ricci, Tosca Trasolini, West Coast Central Club

Colouring History

by Eve Lazarus on March 11, 2017

If you’re on social media you are likely already familiar with Canadian Colour–beautiful, eye-popping historical photographs of Vancouver’s people, buildings and events. The guy behind these colourized photos is Mark Truelove, a Brit who moved to B.C. 16 years ago, and now lives in Hope.

Mark’s day job is web designer/developer, but increasingly he’s doing colourization work for individuals and corporations.

Lucky for us, he also colours photos for fun and then shares them via Facebook and Twitter.

“The colour erases a little bit of that barrier between us and history and I really like connecting with the regular people back then and I find the colourization helps me to do that,” he says.

Mark has always been interested in history, and about five years ago, started to digitally colour old black and white photos from his family album.

When he ran out of those he went to Vancouver Archives.

One of his favourite finds is a photo of the Amputation Club of 1918. The club, which had offices in the Dominion Building, was formed shortly after World War 1 and is now known as War Amps.

“That photo ticks my World War 1 interest box. I can see the connection between then and now with lots of soldiers coming back from Afghanistan or somewhere like that. Their hopes and dreams are going to be similar to the ones those guys have, so I see a connection across time.”

Another one of his favourites shows a crowd going about their morning outside the ABC coffee shop in Burnaby in the ‘40s.

“I’m not so keen on doing famous people, I genuinely like photos that are of regular people doing regular things. It’s more just slices of life,” he says.

After Mark finds an archival photo that captures his attention he starts to research the period to find out the proper colour of everything from clothing to transit to sign posts. He often lands on blogs such as Past Tense, Illustrated Vancouver and Every Place has a Story where a local writer has already researched the history, such as his colourized photos of Joe Ricci and the Vancouver Police Department, Joe Fortes, and the Flying Seven.

“Knowing those personal details really ties me to the photograph,” he says.

He starts by loading the black and white photograph in Photoshop. Then he adds layers of colour and then begins to define a “mask” for the layer which shows where to apply the colour on the image.

“If I am working on a portrait of somebody I would put on these coloured layers and I would mask it out so that colour only applies to the face,” he says. “If it was a guy in a suit, I would do another layer for his jacket, and for his waistcoat, shirt, tie and shoes.”

A portrait, he says, can take just an hour or two, whereas a photo with dozens of people and buildings and scenery can take upwards of 40 hours to complete.

Tags Amputation Club, Bloody Sunday, Canadian Colour, Flying Seven, Joe Ricci, Mark Truelove, Vancouver Archives

Deadlines–obits of memorable British Columbians

by Eve Lazarus on November 30, 2012

As a journalist it always fascinates me where my colleagues find their passions. For me it’s how people connect with their houses, for Tom Hawthorn it’s their deaths. And, while some of the people featured in Deadlines: obits of memorable British Columbians are well known, most often it’s the ordinary life that’s the quirkiest and most colourful.

In Deadlines, Tom, a veteran newspaper reporter and obituary writer (there really is a Society of Professional Obituary Writers) features 38 people who died between 1988 and 2011 divided into sections that run the gamut from “eccentrics” and “trailblazers” to “warriors” and “innovators.”

The stories are beautifully crafted and highly entertaining. Most appeared in the Globe and Mail between 1988 and 2011, and they share two traits–the subjects have some kind of connection to British Columbia, and they’re all dead.

“An obituary is a profile in which the subject cannot grant an interview, so we obituarists behave as newsroom jackals, rending bits of reportage and quotation from reporters who have come before,” he writes. “Perhaps it is for this reason the obituary desk is considered the lowest spot in the newsroom hierarchy. It is a job most typically assigned to cub reporters and burned-out veterans, recovering alcoholics and those who still seek inspiration in the bottom of a bottle.”

If that’s true, then Tom has elevated the profession–and those of us who write history are reaching for our next drink.

I first learned about Spoony Singh (Sundher) from a mention in the Victoria Heritage Foundation’s This Old House series. Tom read about him in a paid obituary notice in the classified section of his newspaper. Before founding the Hollywood Wax Museum in 1965 and a string of other businesses, Spoony, who leads the book, was wonderfully eccentric. He went to school in Victoria, worked in a variety of businesses, married there, and once rode an elephant down Hollywood Boulevard. There is Harvey Lowe from “Entertainers,” who was born in Victoria in 1918, and by age 13 was touring Europe as the world yo-yo champion wearing a white tie and tails. He met Amelia Earhart, the Prince of Wales and Julie Christie along the way.

Born in 1914, Margaret Fane Rutledge founded the Flying Seven, a legendary group of pioneer women from Vancouver, who as Tom writes: “showed a woman’s place was in the cockpit.” Under “athletes” there is Jimmy [baby face] McLarnin, born in Strathcona in 1907, and who twice won the world welterweight championship. Those are a few of my favourites, no doubt you’ll have your own.

You can read the stories chronologically, but I read the book as Tom suggested, as short stories from a newspaper, read in front of the fire and just before bed, chosen at random.

I wish I thought up the title–credit goes to Kit Krieger. Tom says the ‘also rans’ were “Last Writes” and “B.C. R.I.P.”—almost as clever, but deadlines really nailed it.

Deadlines: obits of memorable British Columbians, by Tom Hawthorn.

Tags Amelia Earhart, Deadlines, Flying Seven, Harvey Lowe, Hollywood Wax Museum, Kit Krieger, Margaret Fane Ruthledge, Society of Professional Obituary Writers, Spoony Sundher, This Old House, Tom Hawthorn, Victoria Heritage Foundation

Margaret Fane, Western Canada’s First Commercial Aviatrix

Edmonton:

Meets Amelia Earhart:

The Flying Seven:

Ginger Coote Airways:

Related:

Rolie Moore, the Flying Seven and Burnaby’s Hart House Restaurant

Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts:

The Flying Seven:

Rolie Moore:

Sources:

The Cambie Street Rocket Ship

Cambie Street Bridge:

Built by Sheet Metal Workers:

VIA:

Related:

The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship

Vancouver’s aviatrices:

Flying Flappers:

Italian Heritage Month – meet the East End’s Angelo Branca

Colouring History

Deadlines–obits of memorable British Columbians

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Edmonton:

Meets Amelia Earhart:

The Flying Seven:

Ginger Coote Airways:

Related:

Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts:

The Flying Seven:

Rolie Moore:

Sources:

Cambie Street Bridge:

Built by Sheet Metal Workers:

VIA:

Related:

Vancouver’s aviatrices:

Flying Flappers:

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