By Andy Cline | October 23, 2023 Estimated reading time 10 minutes, 30 seconds.
The 14th annual Northern Lights Aero Foundation Elsie MacGill Awards Gala was held at a new venue in Toronto on Oct. 21. The change in location to the Pearson Convention Centre was necessitated by the growth in popularity of the event, with over 600 attendees this year — up from 450 in 2022.
The Northern Lights Awards Gala showcases exceptional women in the Canadian aviation and aerospace community. The non-profit Northern Lights Foundation is the pinnacle aviation and aerospace awards program that recognizes, promotes, and inspires past, present, and future generations of Canadian Women in the industry.
The foundation’s board of directors is very ably staffed by nine personnel — including eight women — each very accomplished in aviation in their own right. Many of the board are former Northern Lights award recipients themselves. A new component of the Northern Lights team is the junior board, with many of the members being former Rising Star recipients or Northern Lights mentees. They support mentorship programs and help to staff the many events the foundation attends, amongst numerous other duties. They are valuable resources for the always busy board.
The Northern Lights Foundation offers several scholarship programs. The first, the Northern Lights Scholarship, is funded by CIBC and was awarded to four deserving recipients this year: Tridha Aravind, Elena Brown-Hozjan, Shaiza Montgomery, and Terra Samson.
Next, the Captain Judy Cameron Scholarship by Air Canada, introduced in 2020, went to four deserving recipients: Charlotte Thorley, Amanda Tosto, Chanelle Wilson, and Helene Trudeau. The scholarship was created by Northern Lights director Judy Cameron, a retired Air Canada Boeing 777 captain. The $5,000 scholarship is awarded to Canadian women pursuing a career in commercial aviation or aircraft maintenance. CAE co-sponsored an additional four scholarships for the first time this year, entitled CAE Women in Flight Ambassadors for fixed-wing flight students. These went to Meera Bissonauth, Mia Cochran, Kyra Jarvis, and Jaime Hanson.
The difficult task of judging the applicants for the Northern Lights Awards fell to former Government Award recipient, RCAF LCol Diane Baldasero, as well as Captain Steve Linthwaite, who traditionally presented the Jazz Aviation Bursary, and operations expert Allison MacLean, who was inspired when she attended the Northern Lights Gala in 2015.
The Awards also recognize honourees in six different categories: Flight Operations, Government, Business, Education, Engineering, and Trailblazer, as well as two Rising Star awards. Every recipient is an over achiever, neck-deep in involvement in numerous aviation, aerospace, and/or community organizations, and many have other industry awards under their belt. Their motivation, knowledge, and achievements are without exception inspiring.
The Northern Lights Awards 2023 Honourees are:
Captain Kristin Long, who received the Flight Operations Award. Starting her career as a flight attendant, Long is now a standards pilot with WestJet with over 15,000 hours. Her involvement with many Winnipeg-area aviation organizations includes the founding president of Northern Spirit Chapter of Women in Aviation. She is also RCAF Honourary Colonel of the Canadian Forces School of Survival and Aeromedical Training at 17 Wing Winnipeg.
RCAF Maj Catherine Cabot was the Government Award honouree. She is an RCAF aerospace engineer and has led the maintenance teams in numerous RCAF units and major operations supporting CP-140 Auroras and CF-188 Hornets. She has served as Aide-de-Camp to the Chief of the Defence Staff, and is currently Senior Aide-de-Camp to the Governor General of Canada.
Heather Beaton received the Engineering Award. She is the only female ‘Fellow’ at Bombardier’s Aircraft Design & Development engineering organization. She has been involved in the development of all of Bombardier’s aircraft, including the Challengers, Globals, CRJ, C-Series, and Q Series. She also created the Bombardier Women in Engineering group.
Dr. Joana Rocha, a professor at Carleton University, received the Education Award. Her expertise is in aircraft noise reduction, acoustics, and turbulence flow. She has worked with NASA and collaborated with Bombardier and the National Research Council Canada.
Cathy Press was recognized with the Business category award. Press is CEO of Chinook Helicopters and as a long-time employee, helped grow the company to the leading helicopter training school in Canada. She is one of very few women with both fixed- and rotary-wing ATPL licenses and a Class 1 instructor rating, and was Canada’s first female helicopter flight instructor.
Glenna Sharratt won the Trailblazer Award. She is an eminent aviation consultant providing regulatory support to operators, with over 20 years of experience as a Transport Canada Flight Operations Inspector. She was the first female pilot at Perimeter Aviation and is a member of numerous aviation councils and associations. Sharratt was unfortunately unable to attend this year’s Awards Gala.
The recipients of the Rising Star Award were Alisha Sohpaul and Yasna Taieb.
Sohpaul is an aircraft maintenance engineer (AME) and a Transport Canada airworthiness inspector, who is proudly part of the 2.8 per cent of female AMEs in Canada. Recognizing the need for mentorship, she co-founded the “Hangar Queens,” the first female AME network in Canada.
Taieb was an Afghani immigrant and started in aviation as a Royal Canadian Air Cadet. She has worked with five different squadrons as a gliding ground school instructor, and is currently a training officer with 540 Golden Hawks Squadron. Taieb is currently an in-flight operations manager with Jazz Aviation. She was one of the fortunate recipients of the first Captain Judy Cameron Scholarship in 2020, and this year was the Northern Lights Scholarship Sovereign Wealth Management recipient. She is on the Northern Lights junior board, leading the mentorship and social media programs.
According to Taieb, “The Northern Lights Awards means giving back, because I would not be here tonight without the guidance from my mentors Judy Cameron, Julie Beverstein, and Cathy Fraser. It also means encouraging youth to seek help and pursue mentorship when it comes to needing guidance in their professional careers.
“Air Cadets means the world to me; I wouldn’t be here without them, and am happy to pass my experience forward with them,” she continued. “It’s important that cadets and youth can look up and see someone who looks like them so they know they can do it, too.
“It comes down to collaborating with peers and organizations that value women in aviation and create opportunities for them. Also, it’s one thing to apply for opportunities, but it’s another thing to know about them. It’s events like this that provide networking opportunities that can propel [people] forward.”
For detailed backgrounds of the Northern Lights Awards recipients, as well as nominations, sponsorship, scholarship, and mentorship information, please visit: Northernlightsaerofoundation.com.
