Taking Flight... 
Trans-Canada Air Lines Radio Operator Rita B. Schefter

by Kathleen Hogan
from CAHS Journal Vol.59 No.2
The early years
Born the youngest of seven children in Ontario in 1919 to German (and English) speaking farmers whose ancestors had emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine in the early 1800s, Rita excelled in school, skipping two grades and earning the medal for the Highest Entrance [Grade 8] Standing in her school district a few months before her 12th birthday in 1931. Too young to go to work and with none to go to in those early Depression years, too far from the high school in town and too poor to afford lodging, she faced a bleak future until a former teacher intervened. Miss Francesca Kehoe drove her horse and buggy to her parents’ farm and told them that Rita must go to high school, and if it was a matter of money, she could board free with her.
 
And so she did for the first year, in exchange for the farm produce that stocked Miss Kehoe’s pantry. In the years following, other boarding arrangements were made with family. She graduated in four years instead of the usual five, after writing 12 individual Grade 13 Provincial Exams but again lacked the funds and opportunities to go further. Then as now, most rural students had to leave home for off-farm work or post-secondary education and in the 1930s there were few scholarships or other funds available – especially for girls like her who excelled in maths and sciences.
A Shaw Business School student monthly report, April 1940.
Rita with her brother (in Royal Air force (RAF) uniform) in horse-an-cutter on visit to family farm ca. 1939.
Like many farm-raised girls of her time, she instead took her domestic skills and work ethic to the city and went into service, “living in” with a prominent upper-class family in the Rosedale area of Toronto. At 16, she cooked and served meals for the family, their relatives, friends, and work colleagues (including the Eaton family and future Governor General of Canada, Roland Mitchener), polished the sterling silver weekly, did laundry, and provided “light housekeeping” and occasional care of the children. Multi-tasking, even then, and in different uniforms, she sometimes changed as often as three times per day to suit the work. 
Her employers were generous and helpful, encouraging her interest in attending evening classes at Shaw Business School, all the while knowing they would eventually lose her to a job with more prospects. There, she learned shorthand (100 words per minute), typing (68 words per minute on a manual typewriter), and the ability to recite and type the alphabet backwards, which impressed me greatly as a child (and still does), along with file maintenance, accounting, banking and other business skills. Following completion of the courses and a fond farewell to the family, she began working in payroll at Robertson Brothers Chocolates. (As children, we thought this was the BEST job ever as she got free samples when she distributed the paycheques throughout the building).
Rita's Radio College of Canada student card, dated 22 September 1941.
Rita and radio technology
A demonstration of radio technology used for communications in emergency services, weather monitoring, industry, transportation, and navigation at the Canadian National Exhibition caught her interest; by September 1941, after being assessed for aptitude and education, she was taking evening classes at the Radio College of Canada (RCC). There, she acquired skills and knowledge in electronics, Morse Code, and teletype, as well as radio communications technology, protocols, infrastructure, and related subjects. Sceptical people told her she’d never be able to get or do a job in a field like that.
 
Many people today understand the word “radio” to mean a form of broadcast mass media or the object that tunes in the stations and produces the sound, but its original name “wireless” refers more broadly and accurately to the use of radio waves in everything from telegrams, radar, coded broadcasts, short-wave communications, navigation and direction-finding systems of the Second World War-era and earlier, as well as post-war developments such as television, tracking and monitoring devices, remote control and sensing, the Internet, cellphones, GPS, meteorological and space research, drones and wireless networks.
 
Those early radio operators would be amazed at these later applications and the opportunities they created, but even by the early 1940s, jobs were available. Not surprising, considering that between 1939 and 1941, the Department of Transport built 75 training sites as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and by the war’s end, 149 new airports were built and 73 existing ones expanded. By 1942, the demand for radio operators in both civil and military work was so great that the first all-women class of 70 students graduated from RCC and were deployed quickly throughout Canada in transportation and in marine and land-based monitoring stations. Opportunities also arose in the new and expanding civil aviation industry, largely due to most of TCA’s radio operators enlisting in the armed forces.
 
So, “helping out the manpower shortage” on the domestic air front were six Toronto women, reported the Globe & Mail on 18 January 1943, including “a former dental nurse, a photographer, housekeepers and clerks” – my mother among them. They joined the class in Winnipeg for four months of study and practice in advanced radio and teletype skills, flight operations and meteorology, as well as familiarization with aircraft, ground equipment, and the traffic and passenger service departments. TCA’s in-house magazine, Between Ourselves reported in August 1943 that 19 of the original 25 had been posted in airports across Canada, and a further 17 were ready to graduate, with plans “for many, many more.”
A “trainer yellow” Fairey Battle passes the control tower on final approach to runway 29, while a North American Harvard Mk.I trundles down the taxiway in front of hangar row at RCAF Station Borden, 30 July 1940. British Commonwealth Air Training Plan air and ground traffic – and the need for all of the trades that supported it – exploded across the nation during the Second World War.
Department of National Defence photo PL-1104  via the Terry Higgins collection
A post-war professional
My mother continued to work throughout Canada after the war, as a trainer and holiday relief for other operators, earning her five-year service pin in January 1948. In her letter of commendation, W.F. English, VP of Operations remarked that her service had “fallen within two significant periods – that of pioneering and that of war … [seeing] both Country and Company through such critical times.” The war had provided the opportunity, but it was also a significant presence in her daily work during those years, as military planes also used civilian airports to move personnel and materials.
 
An article in the Toronto Evening Telegram on 11 December 1948, entitled “Traffic Cop of the Air has Job of Keeping Planes Flying Safely,” describes a much-expanded Malton airport, along with the work of the ground crew, including air traffic controllers, their assistants, and radio operators, and features a picture and description of my mother at her “radio switchboard”. As the article states, at any one time, she could be speaking mostly in code by radio to a dozen planes at one time, anywhere between Chicago, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto, as well as to the air traffic control tower at Malton itself.
TCA radio operator trainees, trainers, and other staff en route to Winnipeg by train, 15 January 1943. Rita is in the middle of the back row (no hat).
From CAHS Journal Vol. 59 No.2.
A letter from TCA Superintendent of Communications, S.S. Stevens, with the company’s offer and terms of employment, 30 December 1942.
The cover of Vol. 59 No.2. The full Rita Schefter story by Kathleen Hogan is available in our web-shop in both instantly downloadable pdf and print form.