For those of us who yearly attend the Canadian International Air Show to see the iconic Snowbirds, it is comforting to learn that the world-famous flying team was partially established by the nation’s first Black fighter jet pilot.

The late Major Wally Peters was a trailblazer who retired after reaching heights never attained by a Black man in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

He didn’t let racism stop him from becoming Canada’s first Black fighter jet pilot, who worked as a flight instructor and who flew with the famed Snowbirds, the RCAF aerial performance team, which is a main attraction at the CNE air show every September.

Peters is listed in RCAF records as being a member of the aircrew servicing the Snowbirds in 1981 and 1982.

The native of Litchfield, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, was born in 1937, and was the youngest of six children. They were the only Black family in that county.

A gifted athlete, he won a scholarship to Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where his presence on campus proved controversial. Some of his classmates refused to room with him because he was Black.

He soon earned a reputation, while completing his engineering degree, as the fastest running back on campus and won several awards for his skills on the football team, including rookie of the year and most valuable player.

While at the university, he met and married Nancy, a white woman from Sackville. The couple faced discrimination at the time due to their interracial marriage. But, Peters kept his head down and never publicly complained about the racism he faced at the time.

He enlisted in the RCAF to be a pilot in the early 1960s at the age of 24, thinking if he could drive a car, he can fly a plane, according to a Department of Veteran Affairs video.

“Up to that point, I had never known any Black pilots in the military and it was a feeling of accomplishment,” Walters told Veterans Affairs.

He recalled his graduation was tainted by racist comments made by the guest presenter. “What are you doing here?” the man asked Peters. When he replied that he was graduating, the man asked him as what. Peters told him that he was graduating as a pilot.

To which the man responded: “In my day … you would never had got past rear gunner,” Peters relived in the Canada Heroes Remember video.

He went on to a distinguished aviation career that included becoming the Canadian Armed Forces’ first human rights officer, as well as an adviser to the United Nations Security Council, offering advice on the tactical movement of troops by air.

At the UN, he was called on to analyze and brief a security council after the Soviet military shot down a Korean civilian jet in a controversial 1983 incident.

“I remember sitting on the 32nd floor of the United Nations, allowing myself to daydream, and say: ‘Boys, this is a long way from Litchfield, Nova Scotia,’ ” he recalled in the video series.

The RCAF never forgot Peters and in a memoriam credited him for being Canada’s first Black jet fighter pilot and A1 flying instructor.

“He was involved in the development of the Snowbirds and later flew with them,” the Air Force said on its website. “Mr. Peters also piloted Hercules cargo aircraft on assorted missions around the globe.”

Peters also played a role in the creation of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB), which investigated Air India Flight 182 that was brought down in the Atlantic Ocean in June, 1985, by a terrorist bomb.

That led to a job at Transport Canada, where he was promoted to director and director general with responsibility for systems safety before retiring in 1998.

The highly-respected Peters was also an adviser in the 1991 Nation Air accident investigation in Saudi Arabia, chaired the International Data Exchange Aviation Safety and developed and implemented risk management training programs.

Through his rise he never forgot his roots and was a founder and first president of the New Brunswick Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. The airman passed away in 2013 at the age of 76. He left behind a wife, three daughters and five grandchildren.