12/19/2023 0 Comments Denver female meteorologist![]() ![]() About a year earlier, the RCAF had formed a Women’s Division (WD) to meet the need for observers and plotters, for which a university degree was not required. It appears that no thought was given to hiring women into the Meteorological Division until about 1943. Well into the war, meteorology remained an almost completely male profession. Some went on to take an advanced meteorology course offered by the University of Toronto and became meteorologists or independent forecasters even though these courses were not at the post-graduate level, which had been a non-wartime requirement. ![]() Nonetheless, following a “Short Course in Meteorology” given at the University of Toronto they were hired as Meteorological Assistants Grade 3 or dependent forecasters and were deployed to various military bases and became known as metmen within the military environment. Initially these hires were all male, most without post-graduate degrees, and in some cases only limited mathematics and physics courses. In response, the Department of Transport’s Meteorological Division hired hundreds of university graduates and trained them to serve as Meteorological Officers within the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). All the training bases in Canada, which reached 100 by the end of the war, required meteorological support. Canada agreed to take on a major portion of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). Not only did the Meteorological Division have to provide support to the Canadian Armed Forces in addition to civil aviation, but in 1938/39 Canada made a decision that would have a tremendous impact on the Meteorological Division in terms of increased demand. With the outbreak of war, the demand for meteorological services increased exponentially. Patterson was a well-known physicist and because of this was able to work with the university to develop post-graduate courses in meteorology in an effort to meet the new demand. The Meteorological Division was led by John Patterson and housed at the University of Toronto. By 1938, aviation services had become a major component of the newly formed Meteorological Division in the Department of Transport. When men were called up to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces, women replaced them in many fields including meteorology.Ĭanada had been building its meteorological capability for observing and forecasting during the late 1930s recognizing the need for improved aviation weather services, primarily for civil aviation. Women’s involvement in the profession of meteorology had its beginnings near the start of World War II when the study of meteorology became a wartime priority. With regard to gender equality in general, it was only the 1929 decision of the Judicial Council of Britain’s Privy Council, Canada’s highest court at the time, when women were legally recognized as “persons” under British common law. Their history is tied to the advancement of women in the workforce and their achievement of equal status in the workplace. Spurred by that, CMOS decided to look back at the early days of women in meteorology. In 2017, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) celebrated its 50th anniversary. ![]()
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