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A 30-year music industry veteran, Sass Jordan is known as a hard-rocking singer-songwriter and former Canadian Idol judge. On Friday, she will assume a more buttoned-down persona, invested at a Royal Canadian Air Force ceremony as honorary colonel of 417 Combat Support Squadron at 4 Wing Cold Lake in Alberta. But, as Christopher Guly reports, she is not the first celebrity the Canadian Forces has brought into its ranks.

A public face

Typically, honorary lieutenant colonels or colonels for the Army, RCAF honorary colonels, and honorary captains for the Navy, were ceremonial titles primarily handed out to retired Canadian military officers to foster “esprit de corps” within the unit, according to Royal Canadian Navy Captain Michel Charron, director of senior appointments for the Forces. But over the past decade, the selection criteria for the honorary appointments’ “gene pool” was expanded to include non-retired military folks from the worlds of academia, business, politics (excluding Members of Parliament), and arts and entertainment. “One of our objectives is to increase the connection to the communities in which the units are located,” explained Capt. Charron. “By their presence and name, these distinguished Canadians provide a public profile — and a public face — for the unit.” An honorary officer nomination begins at the unit or squadron level, and must be approved by regional command and national headquarters. The recommendation is sent to the Defence Minister, who officially makes the appointment. “The whole idea we have is that if we can make people a little more aware of what the Air Force is involved in, maybe they’ll take more interest overall in our operations,” said retired Col. Dave Peart, who spent 39 years with the RCAF and now manages the program.