Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Related:

• Ceperley House/Burnaby Art Gallery
• Tosca Trasolini and the Flying Seven
• The Flying Seven and the Cambie Street Rocket Ship

Sources:

• 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