Our 40th Reunion in September of 2019 of course got us to reminiscing about several classmates who had passed away, so it was with some shock when one of the guys mentioned that he had seen an article online about Ron Humble who passed away quite awhile ago when was just 44 years of age.  Ron had joined the Canadian Forces in 1975 under the Regular Office Training Program (ROTP) and went to the Royal Roads Military College (RRMC) in Victoria, B.C. which was the site of the former Royal Canadian Naval College.  As a recruit, he was a member of Mackenzie Flight in 2 Squadron and after finishing his first year, was preparing to attend the Basic Officer Training Course in CFB Borden in the summer of 1976.  Much to the surprise of his classmates, his name was not called as they were preparing to board the bus, so Ron asked why and was told that he would not be going and instead was going to be released because of a medical condition which the authorities believed might become an issue when he deployed to the field.  That naturally upset everyone, not only because he was very popular and fun loving and athletic, but especially because he had already survived the physically and mentally demanding first year at RRMC. 

 During those conversations, those of us from the other military colleges who had not known him learned of his “exploits” at RRMC as well as his rather amazing career after he was released, thanks in part to the wonderful article written by a close friend, Tom Sarafin, with Instar Engineering.  That article is reproduced below.  The other blanks were filled in by his RRMC classmates Kevin Biggar, Ritchie Smendziuk, Mike Mathieu, Paul Madore and Scotty Mills.

 Ritchie points out that Ron was a “very cool dude and a very smart guy” and Scotty likewise remembers his love of life, his many capers, and even how he reacted when someone put the Ballroom Blitz on the stereo … but he leaves that up to our imagination.  While Ritchie was at RRMC, he mentions that Ron was a member of the Flying Club and in fact managed to get himself in a little hot water for “buzzing” the twin turrets of Hatley Castle, well before Tom Cruise made that type of stunt famous in the Top Gun movie.  He also made quite a name when he flew from Victoria over the Rocky Mountains to his hometown of Calgary, no small feat for anyone familiar with the treacherous terrain he had to navigate and also considering it was during the winter.  Mike Mathieu, who was also in Mackenzie Flight, happened to be involved in both those memorable “adventures”. 

 Mike calls the Hatley-buzzing “The Air Show” because Ron had quite the aerobatic display planned for RRMC.  Because it was a stand down weekend, they first signed out of the “Duty Ashore” book by writing “Flying Club Business”, appropriately upside down!  As Ron climbed in to the pilot seat, Mike got “temporarily” comfortable in the passenger seat with camera in hand.  Of course, Ron being Ron, he was not content with just flying “straight and level”, so the show included a series of barrel rolls and consecutive loops at progressively lower altitudes, in addition to the high-speed pass of the turrets (well, as high speed as a Cessna 150 Aerobat can get).  The aerial demonstration culminated in one last loop, which according to both legend and a first hand account came a little too close for comfort to the trees.  Although they were already feeling a little queasy by then, Mike took a quick look at Ron after he had pulled out of the dive and his expression conveyed that maybe, just maybe he knew he had pushed the envelope a wee bit!   Mike was a little more colourful, insisting that he was not particularly inclined to become a tree ornament at that stage of his career, so Ron decided to call it day and returned safely to terra firma.

 Mike goes on to confirm that he, Ron, and Lee Lamont did indeed fly in a Cessna 172 from Victoria to Calgary during winter for a weekend.  He said they maybe had a bag of chips, or something similar, and joked that this would be their survival kit if they were forced down somewhere in the Rockies.  In hindsight, he agrees that perhaps it was a bit foolhardy, but they were young and up for anything, as young Type A personalities typically are.  Ron and Lee were both from Calgary, so they stayed with their parents. Ron kindly invited Mike to stay at his house. He laughs because Ron’s mom, being a mom, kindly offered Mike Ron's room, and made poor Ron sleep on the sofa!  That said, he remembers being impressed that his folks had kept Ron’s room unchanged, whereas his own parents had immediately turned his room into a family room the day he left for RRMC!  Later, after Ron was sent back home, superstitious Mike wondered if there might be a connection between having a room to go back to, and actually going back. 

 Another memorable trip saw Ron, Mike, Ty Pile and Len Eger on a weekend outing up Vancouver Island to retrieve a second hand airplane Len had purchased.  Although ROTP cadets were paid a small monthly stipend, they were “young and starving cadets” as he puts it, so they could not afford a rental car or hotel, so they instead hitch-hiked around the small town and its airport.  They had had signed out sleeping bags from the drill staff, and were planning to sleep outdoors under the wings. Luckily, while hitch-hiking back to the airport late in the evening, they were picked up by, of all people, the fellow in charge of the hangar. He kindly unlocked the doors and let them sleep on the floor in the nice warm heated hangar. 

What is quite surprising in going through these stories is how many times the guys ran in to Ron during their later careers. 

 Mike mentions that after Ron had been released, he showed up at Roads during another stand down weekend in their second year.   By this time, Ron had bought his own second hand airplane and again had flown over the Rockies, to Victoria, and parked at some little hobby airport on the edge of town.  Ever the adventurer, Ron was considering doing a touch and go off the parade square!  They all accompanied Ron down to the parade square, where he sized everything up and decided, no doubt influenced by his previous adventure, or perhaps misadventure at Roads, that discretion was indeed the better part of valour so he put that idea to rest as too risky.  However, he stayed overnight at the college with the guys, and the next day needed to get back to his airplane. Bill Schick was one of the only fellows around with his DND404 drivers license's, so he kindly signed out a staff car, and drove them all to the airport to see Ron's airplane.

 Later, in 1982, Mike was selected for post graduate study, and was sponsored by the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment (AETE) in CFB Cold Lake, Alberta. Since it was customary for post graduate students to visit the sponsoring organization before proceeding on their course of study, he travelled to Cold Lake.   As he was walking down the hallway in the AETE building he was quite surprised to see a name plate on an office door that said “Mr Humble”!  Turns out that he taken a job as a civilian EN-ENG-03 in the Structures and Materials section, so they had another opportunity to do a little catching up.  Some months later Ron showed up for a two week short course at Cranfield University in the UK where Mike was studying, so naturally Mike was very pleased to host him in turn.  However, by the time Mike finished his post grad and arrived in Cold Lake to start work at AETE, he found out that Ron had just left, moving to the US to continue his studies.

Kevin Biggar also found out that it was indeed a small world, because he actually knew Ron prior to RRMC since they both attended high schools in Calgary and in fact they had actually wrestled one another at one point.  Even more remarkably, he later ran in to Ron again, in of all places, Iqualuit, in 1988, a small isolated town in the far Canadian North on Baffin Island, now part of Nunavut.  Kevin was doing some graduate work in his specialty, geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering, and more specifically permafrost and frozen ground engineering.  He ran in to Ron in the stairwell of the hotel, and found out that Ron was there with his wife hiking in Pangnirtung National Park.  They quickly got caught up on what each had been doing in the years after RRMC, but that visit was all too quick, cut short because Ron had to run to catch a flight.  Perhaps even more amazingly, Paul Madore recounts that he also met Ron in Iqualuit in the late 1980s. Paul, an Air Navigator, was with the crew of a CP-140 Aurora on one of their Northern Patrols when he ran in to Ron who was hiking the tundra. They shared a table for breakfast and chatted about their lives, with Ron explaining that he had been hired to by NASA and was training astronauts on the T-38 jet trainer. He said he was there with his wife trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city. Later Paul was posted to Colorado in the summer of 2001, and was serving in the facilities in Cheyenne Mountain. He learned that Ron was teaching at nearby USAFA and although they attempted to meet again, the timing did not quite work.

Ritchie also confirms that after Ron got his PhD, he trained astronauts in Houston, but later moved from Houston to Colorado Springs in 1991, apparently prompted in part after someone had been shot one night quite close to his home.  Ritchie around that time had coincidentally just been posted to Colorado Springs for a DND-sponsored Master of Engineering in Space Operations program.  His first class at USAFA was orbital dynamics and sure enough, Ron of all people happened to be his professor. As he started the first lecture, Ron looked at Ritchie and suddenly a smile came over his face and said “Hey, I know you!”   They got caught up somewhat during the first break, but for Ron that was not good enough so he graciously invited him to come to his home for a delightful turkey dinner over the American Thanksgiving weekend, with Ritchie fondly remembering that Ron discarded the drum legs, oddly wondering what use anyone would have for “those things”! 

 Ritchie recalls that Ron’s orbital dynamics class was used as a screening course to some extent as his academic standards were so high, and that at the time he was already fiercely determined to generate more monies for advancing rocket propulsion research.   He felt that the technology had not really progressed from the early days of Sputnik’s launch and so, as Tom has indicated below, he was determined to try to design a better and cheaper system before his untimely passing. Interestingly, had Ron stayed at RRMC, he would have run into Chris Hadfield who had entered RRMC in 1978, before graduating from RMC in 1982 and becoming a well known NASA astronaut and eventually commander of the International Space Station.

 The article below entitled “In Memory of Ron Humble” was found on the Instar Engineering and Consulting Inc website: