I was reading today about the Calgary Stampede opening today (wish I was there!). The Prime Minister was there (didn’t ride in the parade due to other apparently more important Prime Ministerial duties—yeah whatever eh?!). And of course the Canadian Forces Snowbirds air acrobatic team was there to delight the crowds, and delight they did as they always do. To wit:
Snowbirds’ roar signals start of Stampede parade
CALGARY—Tens of thousands of Calgarians jostled 10-deep for their places on downtown streets as the Calgary Stampede parade got off to a roaring start Friday morning with a Canadian Forces Snowbirds fly past.
The grace and power of Canada’s military jet team had the crowd wowed as the screams of the Snowbirds’ jet engines rumbled through a pristine blue sky moments before the parade got rolling.
“Everyone stood, mouths hanging open in awe,” said Dan Ponce, who watched with his son Santiago, 3, as the aerobatics crew fly by. “It was so amazing. We’ve got to see more of them.”
Everybody loves the Snowbirds, including me but folks, let’s face facts: As much as I admire our troops and all who know me know I mean that with all sincerity, the Snowbirds are equipped with a really, really, liberal-style Canadian fleet of equipment, and have a really liberal-style pacifist pantywaist name —just as you’d expect from pacifist Canadian liberals. They use an airplane and have a team name that only a granny or a little girl could really love and be proud of.
The aircraft they use is a cute little cub trainer jet. It’s the CT-114 Tutor jet, and they’ve been using it since 1971. This is not exemplary of a strong nation committed to freedom and democracy at home and around the world. Rather it is a symbol of an ancient military force (if “force” is even the right word—more like “request”), backward liberal-left appeasment thinking, pacifism, and a non-commitment to world peace, freedom, and democracy. Al-Qaida would go to an airshow and immediately put a tick mark beside Canada.
They’re sort of the Toronto “Blue Jays” (awe, lovely little birdies—isn’t that sweet) of the international airforce acrobatics teams. And I would like to be the first to suggest that we take the pacifism and politically-correct pantywaist liberalism out of our national Canadian Forces air team image.
It’s time to deploy some of our more fearsome Canadian Airforce CF-18 fighter jets into a new team —and for goodness sake, change the name to the “Canadian Fearsome Grizzlies” acrobatic team —or something like that.
· The “Canadian Power Wolfpack of Awesome Fear” team?
· The “Canadian Rabid Beaver of Death (and Democracy!)” team?
· Anything but pretty “Maple Leafs” —or birdies of any kind.
For those who don’t know about the Snowbirds, while the writer of the above news article was clearly adequately enthused enough to make mention of the Snowbirds’ flypast, he waaay overstated the story. I’m so sorry, but our little cadet trainer aircraft in our Snowbirds (oh God) team aren’t jets that command verbiage such as “power” (the writer was right about “the grace”, but not “the power”); nor does this line even remotely hit the right tone: “the crowd wowed as the screams of the Snowbirds’ jet engines rumbled through a pristine blue sky…”. Maybe this was the writer’s first airshow experience, but he needs to see a couple F-18s or F-16s go by and have his chest literally vibrate with the awesome rumble of screaming hellfire power. Snowbirds “whisp” by. Eating something crunchy in a movie theater causes more of a disturbance.
The Americans of course have at least two powerful teams with powerful websites: The U.S. Navy’s own Blue Angels (OK, lame name) and the Air Force’s own Thunderbirds (good name). The Blue Angels make up in airpower what they lose in name—they use a fleet of fearsome F/A-18 fighter jets; and the Thunderbirds use a fleet of legendary F-16 Falcons. In both cases, despite their pretty and awesome paint jobs, the aircraft are mission-ready, meaning they aren’t “wasted” for airshows exclusively—they’re capable of being deployed in the event they’re needed.
The Snowbirds’ web site introduces us to political correctness right from the sit-down (as opposed to get-go). It’s a wonder they couldn’t find a non-white girl rather than the standard issue.
Click to see bigger
The opening picture alternates as I later found out—one had a rugged looking male!
The de facto purpose of any of these national military aircraft acrobatic teams is to create pride and enthusiasm and draw interest among the citizenry, in the hope that they’ll (a) support the military with enthusiasm and (b) create interest among our youth so they’ll join up. There’s other reasons too. But it all speaks to pride and they use excitement to build that pride.
So sure, keep the Snowbirds too! But in the interest of being forward-thinking, it may be time to deploy the assets, Canada.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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