Snowbirds flyover draws eyes to the sky across city
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/05/2020 (1437 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Five geese fluttered above the parking lot at Grace Hospital Tuesday morning, honking and honking, with dozens of people — nurses, doctors, patients, maintenance workers, random people off the street — standing in small clusters, craning their necks toward the sky.
The geese made routine landings and joined the crowd looking into the sky to watch birds much bigger than them that had not feathers, but jet engines.
The Canadian Forces Snowbirds were coming to say hello.
It was 9:30 a.m., and Elsie Cesmistruk, a health-care aide who started work about two hours earlier, exited through the Grace’s front doors to get some fresh air. She was wearing a blue mask, dark scrubs and comfy-looking runners. Her morning break just happened to coincide with the impending fly-by of nine jets zipping at nearly 600 kilometres per hour through the Prairie sky.
“I didn’t know they were coming until this morning,” she said.
It was a happy surprise at a time when they are in short supply.
The Snowbirds, the military’s air-show corps, had already flown through Toronto, Halifax and Niagara Falls, among other communities on a mission the group is calling Operation Inspiration, a nationwide tour of flyovers meant to boost morale as the country enters the third month since pandemic lockdowns began.
Nearby, nurses Karen Cannell Jamieson and Kathy Duke stood with their eyes to the sky. Both veteran health-care providers have close ties to the Forces. Duke’s father was in the air force, and once upon a time, so too was Cannell Jamieson.
“We co-ordinated (our breaks) with the other girls because we wanted to see the planes,” said Duke, who will retire from Grace next month after 40 years.
It seemed everyone at the hospital wanted to catch a glimpse. In a second-storey window, a man in a white lab coat cupped his hands over his eyes in anticipation, and on the front steps, a small throng had materialized.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr6GD8bp1v0
On the bus bench just west of the hospital, two seniors sat with binoculars. A man in a St. James Legion hat pulled out his sunglasses a short distance away, and in a few balconies of an apartment building behind them, residents waited, eyes fixated on the sky.
It was 9:43, and a man named Darren, wearing a blue-and white robe, stood leaning against the railing in front of the hospital’s main entrance. He’d been in the hospital since mid-April, and he welcomed the fresh air into his lungs with a smile.
“I haven’t been outside for two weeks,” he said. “I’m excited to see the planes, but I’m really just excited to be outside.”
Just then, nine CT-114 Tutors zoomed in from the east, and their booming “whoosh” filled the air. A nurse stood and clapped. A maintenance worker pulled out his camera. And Darren stood there, smiling even bigger than he already had been.
“That’s pretty neat,” he said.
The planes flew around the hospital, emerging on the other side to do the world’s fastest curtain call, before heading westward to their next stop on their tour of Winnipeg from above.
Everyone walked inside. The show was over. Back to work.
ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca
Ben Waldman
Reporter
Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.
Mike Deal
Photojournalist
Mike Deal started freelancing for the Winnipeg Free Press in 1997. Three years later, he landed a part-time job as a night photo desk editor.
Ruth Bonneville
Photojournalist
As the first female photographer hired by the Winnipeg Free Press, Ruth has been an inspiration and a mentor to other women in the male-dominated field of photojournalism for over two decades.
