Air Command’s Finest Hour
Gov – Gen Schreyer Bestows
Queen’s and Command Colours
(Republished from the 18 August 1982 issue of The Voxair)
WINNIPEG — A hall-mark was etched on the pages of Canadian military aviation history here, July 31, 1982.
In a prestigious and absorbing array of pageantry, tradition and precision flying, Gov.-Gen. Edward R. Schreyer conferred Queen’s and formation colors on Air Command, inheritor of 73 years of trials and triumphs of Canadian airmen, in peace and war.
The event, on the hangar line of CFB Winnipeg, was ‘“‘the most significant for Air Command since its formation in 1975,” said LGen. K.E. Lewis, its commander since early 1980.
Under sullen skies that later burst into brilliant prairie sunshine, more than 400 members of the command’s headquarters and CFBs Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie executed the intricate ritual. .
They performed with sharpness and the kind of parade square aplomb not supposed to be in the inventory of technicians, clerks and flyers.
Commanding the parade was Colonel Peter J. Taggart, newly appointed deputy chief of staff for intelligence, plans and requirements at Air Command. .
Making up the parade were two squadrons, a guard of honor and a color party, along with the Air Command Band and 402 Air Reserve Squadron’s Pipes and Drums.
The spectacle was a rare fusion of jet-age aerobatics and centuries-old tradition and pageantry meeting head-on. The Snowbirds closed the two-hour ceremony with a 25-minute performance before a wide-eyed crowd estimated at 3,000.
Some of their aerial gymnastics even had a few hard-bitten reporters rubbing their eyes.
On the arrival of the governor-general, he was accorded a royal salute and a roaring fly past by four CF-101 Voodoo fighters.
Highlight of the moving ceremony was the dedication and consecration of the two colors by the command’s two principal chaplains, Colonels E.V. Porrior and C.J. Campbell. The act was performed on an improvised altar of piled drums. .
Looking on were Manitoba’s lieutenant-governor, Hon. Pearl McGonigal, and the chief of the defence staff, Gen. R.M. Withers.
Responsibility for putting the myriad pieces together that make a colors presentation and associated events click was LCOL A.H. Stevenson, the command’s senior staff officer for security. Backing him were nine committees with diversified tasks spanning the spectrum from protocol to finance.
More than half the cost of the event was funded by personnel of Air Command bases and stations, along with a $2,000 grant from the Royal Canadian Air Forces Association. ,
The event marked only the second time in the history of Canadian military aviation that the symbolic artifacts of loyalty and tradition have been presented to the Canadian air force. _
Last occasion was 32 years ago in Ottawa when Viscount Alexander of Tunis, then Canada’s governor-general, conferred colors on the Royal Canadian Air Force, predecessor of Air Command.