8064

 8064 Keith Ogilvie








RMC 69 Engineering & Management

RCAF and beyond

 

Started post-RMC life as a Communications Electronics Engineer, immediately stationed at CFS Lowther, a Pinetree Line radar base in the middle of nowhere, between Kapuskasing and Hearst. 

 

Changed to Aeronautical Engineering to avoid a career being eaten by black flies.  Posted to Uplands (Ottawa) for 3 years, where I kept my RCAF surplus Chipmunk #076 in #11 Hangar (co-owned with Mike Potter for a while).

 


1974, got a posting to Cold Lake as Range Test Officer.  After long reflection, left the RCAF to work with Dept. of Communications on the pioneering Communications Technology Satellite.  Great fun functional and sound testing the novel solar array. 

 

Moved to a full time consulting career, starting with MOT and morphing into mostly governance and international development.  Took three or four years around the late 70’s to blow glass in a hand built studio in the Gatineau Hills. Not enough money to live on, so back to consulting.

 


All told, spent 40+ years travelling the world, to places most people never get to see—all over the Middle East, Africa, Caribbean, Asia.  Took 4 months off in the fall of 1990 to sail from Kingston to the Keys with kids on our (much too small) Alberg 29.  Moved to South Africa just after transition from apartheid for 4 years as Director of the Canada-SA Programme on Governance, then 6 years of working in Premier’s office in BC, then back to international consulting. 

 


Gradually cut back on consulting work through 2010’s, authored two books on wartime aviators, one of whom was my father:  The Spitfire Luck of Skeets Ogilvie—from the Battle of Britain to the Great Escape, followed a couple of years later with Failed to Return—Canada’s Bomber Command Sacrifice in the Second World War. 

 

As of 2024, Francine and I have two adult kids living in the Victoria area, one curly haired grandkid and one granddog.  Spending a lot of time in the BC Aviation Museum looking after the Library and Resource Centre.  Rest of the time hiking the trails, gardening and gazing out on our own Gulf Islands paradise.

 

Airplanes forever, especially Spitfires.  This one, in the RAF Museum at Hendon, was actually flown by my father in combat.  Putting my hand on the stick, I could feel the immediate presence of ghosts…which is why I write, to keep them front of mind.

 


 

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