Every Place Has a Story

Margaret Fane, Western Canada’s First Commercial Aviatrix

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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.  

Margaret Fane
Margaret Fane beside a 1930s Hudson Terraplane in Edmonton. Courtesy Fane family archives, early 1930s.
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.

Margaret Fane
Victoria Times Colonist, August 1, 1935

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.”

Margaret Fane
Margaret Fane in Edmonton, 1934. Courtesy Fane family archives

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.

Margaret Fane and the Flying Seven
Autographed photo of Margaret Fane and the Flying Seven at Sea Island, 1936. Vancouver Archive photo

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.

Margaret Fane
Margaret Fane is presented with the Amelia Earhart medallion and becomes an honorary member of the Ninety-Nines. Fane family archives, 1984

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.”

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

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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.

The Flying Seven in 1936, courtesy Vancouver Archives and Canadian Colour. Rolie Moore is second from the right.
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

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Sources:

 

The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship

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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.

Flying Seven ca.1936. Photo CVA 341-478

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.

Tosca Trasolini, 1939

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.

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

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.

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For more stories like this one, check out Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

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