True Patriot Love - August 23, 2026


The Airshow That Inspired Dan Dempsey to Fly ✈️#shorts

Hosted by
Shara Micucci Mike Wixson
Mentioned
Bill Ted Groyper Rockliffe
Why Canada Risks Losing the Snowbirds' Flying Edge ft. Dan Dempsey What Happens When Canada’s Coast Guard Gets the Call？ ft. Tom Morrissey

Episode Stats


Length

1 minute

Words per minute

204.66

Word count

328

Sentence count

20


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Before we get to your military career and the snowbirds, as a kid growing up, when did you get the bug to become a pilot?
00:00:09.140 When did that first enter your mindset, Dan, that that's what you want to do?
00:00:13.820 Well, really early in life, actually, like I think many kids would say about watching the snowbirds now.
00:00:19.200 In my case, it was way back on the 6th of June, 1959, National Air Force Day and RCS station Rockliffe, Ontario.
00:00:27.340 My dad was a military policeman in the RCF.
00:00:29.560 He was on duty that day.
00:00:31.320 And so there I was down at the air show, and that was the first public show of the RCF Golden Hawks
00:00:36.500 and one of the early shows of the RCF Red Knight as well.
00:00:39.400 And I just remember being mesmerized by these beautiful gold airplanes and then offset by the Red Knight.
00:00:46.740 And then, you know, so I became a big fan as a young kid of flying and air shows and so on and so forth.
00:00:51.800 And so, you know, fast forward five years later to our safe station, Lincoln Park in Calgary, where we're based at the time.
00:00:59.320 And my dad took me out to McCall Field, where the Golden Hawks were flying out of.
00:01:04.460 And lo and behold, you know, they taxi right in front of me.
00:01:07.600 And the pilot at the back, Gold 7, Bill Grip, who I later found out, waved to me.
00:01:13.120 And, you know, there he was now.
00:01:14.980 I'm 11 years old.
00:01:16.460 And boy, that was it.
00:01:17.760 I was hooked.
00:01:18.800 So everything I did from that point forward was to try and put myself in a position, you know, educationally and so on and so forth, where I could join the Air Force and maybe someday be lucky enough to fly in an aerobatic team.
00:01:31.520 So that's how it all started for me.
00:01:33.100 And it's not an uncommon story, I have to tell you.