Capt Sherm
Don’t ask me to “get over it”. Don’t ask me to forget that some colleagues voted in secret ballots to encourage me to persist….yet had already signed “contracts”…..that Hawke was ready to do, say or spend anything to do his masters’ bidding….and that many….my family included, could not see why I wouldn’t cross a picket line to save my life. I cannot ever forget that. I can never forget pilots who parroted the mantras “What’s the Federation done for me?”….”I made a decision for my family”….I just took my job back”….as though those oft-repeated words from an Abeles script could hide the treachery beneath.
But I work with those people. I have hired them, shared cockpits with them, checked them, counselled them, mentored them. They are humans…they did what they did. I did what I did….what I voted to do….what 20 years of active AFAP membership had prepared me to do. I sleep well at night. I stay away from melancholy and grief over lost years and wasted emotion….
But I cannot forget and nor should any pilot. Unity is strength…yet frail. Solidarity is the key….yet our weak point. It could happen again…now or soon or in some far distant sky…..but it could happen.
Words well chosen, but even more, palpably from the heart. I dips me lid.