Daring Lady Flyers: Canadian Women in the Early Years of Aviation

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
the author of Military Archives: International Directory of Military
Publications and The Bantams: The Untold St

Almost everyone knows who Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson were—famous
women flyers from the United States and England. But how many could name
even one of Canada’s female pilots? This book is a fitting tribute to
Canada’s pioneering women aviators—15 intrepid flyers who took to
the air in peace and war.

A pilot herself, the author understands what it takes for a woman to
become a flyer. In the early days, however, female would-be pilots also
had to face social disapproval and discrimination for their ambition.

The author is clearly a diligent researcher: she gathered the
reminiscences of subjects from across Canada and abroad in a quest that
took her 15 years. We learn about Eileen Vollick of Hamilton, Ontario,
who, in 1928, became Canada’s first licensed female pilot; Elsie
MacGill, the world’s first female aeronautical engineer, who had a
distinguished career in the aircraft industry; “The Flying Seven,” a
group of women who banded together in their own exclusive flying club;
and Vi Milstead of Toronto, Canada’s first female bush pilot, who went
from flying trappers into the northern wilderness to ferrying Spitfire
fighters and Mosquito bombers for the Royal Air Force in World War II.
Milstead also served, along with three other Canadian women, as a ferry
pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary. One of her fellow ferry pilots,
Marion Orr, went on to become the first woman to own an airport, at
Maple, Ontario.

Good photographs show these gallant young flyers standing proudly
beside their planes. Joyce Spring has does a worthy job of documenting
this part of Canadian aviation history.