A new day

The day finally arrived. I checked into the Radisson hotel near Pearson Airport the night before, and on Monday morning, my fellow classmates and I were tentatively introducing ourselves to each other in the lobby. My class was a big one: 20 of us. Everyone seemed really nice.

We were met by Rob and Kim, two of our instructors, and taken off to the place where our uniforms were to be fitted. I looked at myself in the mirror wearing the stripes of an airline pilot and once again felt like I was in someone else’s life. I am really doing this?

The first week of class was mostly company indoctrination and Crew Resource Management, the details of which I won’t bore you with. The highlight of the week, though, was definitely Day 2. We were all on pins and needles. This is the day we would find out which aircraft and city we would be based in.

Finally, the staff from HR strolled into the class. They literally had a hat (a pilot’s hat), into which they put everyone’s names on pieces of paper. They wrote the choices on the whiteboard: 15 Dash-8 100/300 series based in Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver, and 5 Q-400 aircraft (the brand-new NextGen 70-seaters) based in Toronto. The drawing began.

The staff drew the first name, then went to that person and he drew the second name, and so on. I was thirteenth out of 20.

Then they went back to the start of the list, and asked the #1 guy what he wanted. He chose the Q-400. The second guy picked Calgary. And so on.

When they got to me, everything was still available except Calgary, which went in the top 6. I hesitated only a moment. I chose Vancouver. Staying in Toronto was tempting, but not as much as the chance to return to the Coast.

Our groundschool class was awesome. Out of the 20, I was the only female, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. We all got along really well, and the first week had lots of laughs and new friendships. Most of us went out to dinner together. We were introduced to the union and went out for a fancy dinner with the reps, where we apparently spent a record amount on the bill. It was great.

After the first week, we had a few days off, and then we were dispersed to the various training bases. Seven of us on the Classic Dash went to Vancouver (I was not among them, sadly), eight of us stayed in Toronto, and the Q-400 guys were partially in Toronto and Montreal.

While I would have loved to do my training in Vancouver, it was nice to get to stay in Toronto for my days off. It gave me a chance to start slowly packing up my condo, and managed to get a few visits in with friends. I went cycling on Toronto Island, saw a movie or two, went for coffee more than a few times, and I even met a couple of new friends. Leaving everyone behind is becoming the hardest part about leaving Toronto.