Captain Robyn Shlachetka and first officer Raven Beardy never intended to make history.
In fact, the pair became Manitoba’s first female Indigenous medevac team entirely by accident.
On March 5, the two weren’t scheduled to fly together for Missinippi Airways, but Shlachetka’s usual first officer took some unexpected time off and Beardy volunteered to take that empty spot.
After snapping a photo to commemorate this occasion, the pair sent the image to Shlachetka’s mother, who quickly posted it to Facebook.
Over the next couple days, the post garnered plenty of attention beyond their usual circle of family and friends, having been shared almost 12,000 times by March 8.
“I wasn’t expecting it at all, but it was really cool to see all the positive feedback that we got from it,” said Beardy, who received her pilot’s licence five years ago.
“Everyone’s being supportive,” said Shlachetka, who’s been flying for over a decade. “People are saying really nice things to you, strangers come up to you and congratulate you.”
Outside of serving as an inspiration to women and Indigenous people, Shlachetka and Beardy’s story is also very unique to the north, since they hail from Wabowden and Shamattawa, respectively.
For Beardy, growing up in a fly-in community really exposed her to how important these medevac services are, especially when she was personally airlifted as a little girl due to complications with her appendix. This experience also taught her how Indigenous representation was really lacking in the aviation industry at that point.
“As a kid I kind of questioned ‘why aren’t there people from our community in jobs like that?’ So that kind of just stuck with me.”
Meanwhile, Shlachetka said she wanted to be a pilot from as far back as she can remember, since her father worked as a bush pilot, which gave her plenty of exposure to flying as a kid.
However, even with built-in passion and experience, Shlachetka said it was extremely difficult to break into the industry, since flight school is expensive and resources in communities like Wabowden are usually hard to come by. Thankfully, Shlachetka said those obstacles have become less and less insurmountable in the age of the Internet.
“That’s kind of one of the things that’s shifting with social media, people are realizing that there actually are support groups, that there are support networks up here and people you can talk to.”
To really drive this point home to northern youth, Beardy and Shlachetka said they are in the middle of trying to open up a flight training program in Thompson. While the finer details of this program haven’t been finalized yet, the pair is hoping to put something online in the upcoming summer months.
“We’re just in the talking stages right now, so that people from smaller communities don’t have to go so far to get their pilot’s licence,” said Beardy. “Because that’s a challenge too, being so far away from home.”
While Shlachetka is keen to tell all their would-be recruits that being a medevac pilot in Northern Manitoba is very rewarding, she also warns that it is not for the faint of heart.
Unlike a lot of commercial airways like Air Canada and West Jet, medevac pilots are expected to complete their assignments regardless of the flying conditions they encounter.
“It’s a totally different type of flying because there’s no such thing as cancelling for bad weather,” said Shlachetka. “No matter what, the person’s still sick. You still need to get them from point A to point B, regardless.”
In terms of Shlachetka and Beardy’s status as a flight crew, the pair said they are back in their usual rotations and don’t know when they will be flying together again.
However, with Missinippi Airways planning to expand their operations, who knows what the future will hold for these two trailblazers.
“So there’ll be more planes and, therefore, they’re going to hire more pilots, and hopefully Robyn and I can get on the same schedule, because that would be pretty neat,” said Beardy.
