President Donald Trump on Thursday called off plans to livestream the December 3 military execution of Nidal Hasan after the announcement generated widespread disgust.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the U.S. government would livestream the firing-squad execution of Hasan, a former Army major who shot and killed 13 people at the Fort Hood Army base in 2009. A court-martial jury sentenced Hasan to death in 2013.
It would have been the first public execution in the United States since a hanging in Missouri in 1937, though the last well-known public execution occurred a year earlier in Kentucky. Rainey Bethea, a black man, was hanged before a crowd of roughly 20,000 people in Owensboro. Kentucky became the last state to outlaw public executions two years later.
The plan to livestream Hasan's execution drew comparisons to the Taliban. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it "a barbaric promotion of a culture of death." Writing at The Lamp, an orthodox Catholic journal, Matthew Walther noted that it would be the "first ever government-sanctioned snuff film in American history."
However, Trump and Hegseth didn't trip over just liberal and religious pieties, but a deep-rooted American aversion to bloody displays of state power that goes back to the colonial era.
Lynn Novick, the director of Ken Burns' upcoming PBS documentary series Crime and Punishment in America, tells Reason that public executions "haven't been a regular part of American life since the Colonial time in the early years of the Republic, and there's really good reasons for that."
One of American colonists' many complaints about oppressive British rule was England's expansive criminal code, known derisively as the "bloody code" because it contained more than 200 capital crimes.
"In Colonial America, [an execution] was an everyday occurrence," Novick says. "There were executions all the time, and one of our scholars told us that most people would have seen someone executed in their lifetime."
Excessive capital punishment also ran contrary to emerging theories by leading Enlightenment thinkers that punishment should be proportional to the crime and not driven by revenge or bloodlust.
Perhaps more importantly, public executions were disorderly affairs that, rather than reinforce the power of the state, inflamed the passions of the mob to a dangerous degree. "In many cases, crowds would become very boisterous, riotous, angry, excited," Novick says. "There were sometimes violent outbursts at these events."
As a result, many of the Founding Fathers saw frequent public executions as disruptive to the fragile social order. The early American republic's move away from sanguinary spectacle was driven by a desire to create a stable, virtuous citizenry and sever itself from the European continent's tradition of public torture and execution.
As Reason described in a recent cover story, the result of this was the invention of the American penitentiary in the early 1800s, which was sold as a humane and rehabilitative replacement for the whipping post and gallows.
States transitioned from public to private hangings behind their newly built prison walls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before switching to the use of the electric chair. This was not done out of entirely humanitarian concerns, especially in the South, where public executions often became quasi-religious ceremonies, with the condemned declaring their ultimate victory over death (and the state) through Jesus Christ.
"Executions had contested meanings," Michael Ayers Trotti wrote in The End of Public Execution. "They were moments of justice, of state power; but they were also moments of religion, exceptional moments that transcended normal life."
The main reason that public executions disappeared over the long term, though, is obvious to anyone who's not a sociopath: It's weird and dehumanizing to gather in a crowd to watch someone else be killed, to participate in the government's promotion of its power to take a human life.
Rachel Abbott, who witnessed Bethea's 1936 hanging when she was 5 years old, told WKU Public Radio in 2016 that she had nightmares about it years later.
"I remember it well, but I didn't want to," she said. "I tried to get away from it because it was hurting me so bad. I started having me nightmares after I was older. It's like his spirit was just hanging all around me. The first thing you'd know I'd start crying because I felt he wanted me to help him get buried, get sent back to his gravesite by his father. I still have tears running when I think of it."
The Canadian Forces Snowbirds brought the Canadair CT-114 Tutor’s aerobatic career to a close on Friday, October 16, with a final home-base demonstration at 15 Wing Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The private event, which was livestreamed, honored the Canadian-built jet trainer that defined the team for more than half a century, as well as the aircrew and support personnel who kept the increasingly demanding aircraft flying.
This Friday, join us in saying farewell to the CT-114 Tutors.
Watch the last airshow on Friday, October 16, 2026 live on our Facebook page.
While Friday’s performance marks the end of the Tutor’s aerobatic display career with the team, a Grey Cup flyover in Calgary on November 15 remains on the schedule.
Speaking to MooseJawToday on October 15, Snowbirds team lead Maj. Maciej “Match” Hatta described the Tutor’s final season as an emotional milestone for the squadron, as well as an opportunity to recognize the families and support personnel who sustain the team during its annual touring season.
The Snowbirds taxi at Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho, during the Gowen Thunder Open House and Airshow, in 2017. Note the twin smoke tanks below the fuselage. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Joshua C. Allmaras
Hatta has a long personal history with the aircraft. He flew with the Snowbirds from 2014 to 2017, subsequently worked on testing the Tutor’s avionics upgrades, and returned this year to lead the team through its final season with the jet. Despite having flown around 30 different aircraft as a test pilot, he has a particular attachment to the Tutor.
“This is still my favorite airplane to fly,” he said.
Hatta recalled flying a maintenance test sortie alone the previous day, enjoying the opportunity to look out over the wings without the near-constant radio communications involved in leading a formation display. He also noted the differences between individual aircraft in the fleet.
“They all have their own personality,” Hatta said. “Some of them howl a little more than others. Some get hotter inside. Some have poor air conditioning.”
Lt.-Col. Guillaume Paquet, commanding officer of No. 431 Air Demonstration Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), said the final season has prompted strong reactions from spectators, many of whom have grown up watching the Snowbirds perform in the Tutor.
“The reality is we’ve been touring this country for 55 years, so everyone has a story, a childhood memory,” Paquet said.
Golden Hawks To Snowbirds
Canada’s military aerobatic tradition dates back to 1929, when the biplane Armstrong Whitworth Siskin helped establish the country’s formation-flying heritage. The modern era began in 1959 with the creation of the Golden Hawks, formed to mark the 50th anniversary of powered flight in Canada and the 35th anniversary of the RCAF. Flying gold-painted Canadair-built F-86 Sabre fighters, the team initially was intended to operate for a single season. Its popularity led to several more years of performances across Canada and the United States before it was disbanded after the 1963 season amid the high costs of maintaining it.
Canada’s centennial celebrations in 1967 brought a new demonstration team, the Golden Centennaires, which flew CT-114 Tutor jet trainers at 100 airshows across Canada and the United States. The Tutors would subsequently become the foundation of the Snowbirds. In 1969, Colonel O.B. Philp, newly appointed commander of No. 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, encouraged instructors to practice formation aerobatics using surplus Tutors left over from the Centennaires program. Initially presented as training and proficiency flying, the formations soon attracted public attention and gradually evolved into an established demonstration team.
The Golden Centennaires existed for only one year to celebrate the centennial of Canada in 1967. Canadian Forces
The formation grew from four aircraft in 1970 to seven in 1971, when the Snowbirds name was adopted following a competition among schoolchildren. Two solo aircraft were added in 1972, establishing the team’s familiar nine-aircraft format. That year, its pilots were assigned to demonstration flying on a full-time basis. The team’s Tutors were modified to support solo operation from the right-hand seat and the demands of inverted flight during aerobatic displays. In 1974, the Tutors received their distinctive red, white, and blue paint scheme, and the team was authorized to perform a fully aerobatic display.
Seven Canadian Forces Snowbirds jets perform an aerial demonstration earlier this year. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech. Sgt. Mikayla Gibbs
The Snowbirds subsequently achieved full squadron status as No. 431 Air Demonstration Squadron, becoming one of the most recognizable symbols of Canadian military aviation. Their officially stated mission was to demonstrate the professionalism, teamwork, and flying skills of the Canadian Armed Forces to audiences across North America.
The U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, join their signature Delta formation with the Snowbirds for a scheduled photo shoot over Evansville, Indiana, in 2015. U.S. Navy photos by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael Lindsey/Released
However, the Tutor’s final years were marked by a series of serious accidents and renewed scrutiny of its aging systems.
In October 2019, a Snowbirds aircraft crashed in Georgia after an engine fuel-delivery failure, with the pilot surviving an ejection that was itself affected by a parachute malfunction. In May 2020, another Tutor crashed shortly after takeoff near Kamloops, British Columbia, killing the Snowbirds public affairs officer and seriously injuring the pilot; investigators determined that a bird strike had triggered an engine compressor stall. The fleet was temporarily grounded following that accident, with operations resuming under additional restrictions in August 2020.
A further accident at Fort St. John, British Columbia, in August 2022 prompted another fleet-wide operational pause after an engine failure during takeoff; investigators identified an improperly assembled oil filter as the cause. The aircraft returned to service the following month.
The Royal Canadian Air Force’s Snowbirds parked on the flight line at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, in 2018, during the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s 60th Anniversary Celebration. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Emily Kenney, USAF
Subsequent safety measures included restrictions on certain aerobatic maneuvers and formations, minimum runway-length requirements, and limits on flying over water or performing some maneuvers outside gliding distance of a suitable landing surface.
At the same time, the persistent engineering challenges involving the Tutor’s airframe, engines, and ejection system were all factors in its retirement, with the RCAF concluding that further life-extension work was no longer practical.
Developing Canada’s Jet Trainer
Canadair Limited of Montreal began developing the CL-41A Tutor in the mid-1950s as a high-performance jet trainer to prepare RCAF pilots for the Canadair-built F-86 Sabre. The all-metal, low-wing, single-engine aircraft featured side-by-side seating and duplicate flight controls, allowing instructors to monitor students closely and take control when necessary. Two prototypes were built, with the first making its maiden flight on January 13, 1960, with Canadair test pilot Ian MacTavish at the controls.
Capt. Wes MacKay banks his Canadian Forces Tutor jet over downtown Toronto in a practice run before a performance at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1988. Photo by Boris Spremo/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Following an extensive testing and demonstration program, Canadian Minister of National Defence D.S. Harkness announced an order for 190 production aircraft on September 11, 1961. Deliveries began in 1963, with each aircraft reportedly costing approximately C$425,000 (around $394,000). Powered by a General Electric J85-CAN-40 turbojet built under licence by Orenda, the aircraft entered RCAF training service in late 1964 under the designation CT-114 Tutor.
As well as the RCAF, the Tutor found one other military operator in Malaysia. The Royal Malaysian Air Force received 20 examples designated the CL-41G Tebuan (meaning “Wasp” in the Malay language), which served between 1967 and 1986 in the ground-attack role.
The Tutor served as the RCAF’s primary jet trainer for decades, accumulating more than one million flight hours before its training role ended in 2000. It was replaced by the CT-156 Harvard II and CT-155 Hawk. The aircraft nevertheless remained in military service with the Snowbirds.
The Next Chapter
The Tutor’s retirement will bring an end to a long chapter in Canadian military aviation, but the Snowbirds are expected to continue flying with a new aircraft type. In May of this year, the Department of National Defence announced plans to replace the CT-114 with the CT-157 Siskin II, based on the Pilatus PC-21 turboprop trainer. The new demonstration capability will remain at 15 Wing Moose Jaw and is expected to become operational in the early 2030s.
Today the Government of Canada announced a commitment to purchase a future RCAF air demonstration capability. After more than six decades of service 2026 will mark the final season for the CT‑114 Tutor aircraft fleet which has represented Canada with dignity and pride since 1971. pic.twitter.com/iqRNE8d8H3
— Royal Canadian Air Force (@RCAF_ARC) May 19, 2026
The Siskin II has already been procured under Canada’s wider Future Aircrew Training (FAcT) program, for advanced fixed-wing and jet preparation. It is one of five aircraft types being procured under a 25-year, C$11.2-billion (approximately $7.9 billion) contract awarded to SkyAlyne in 2024. The other four types are the CT-102B Astra II (Grob G 120TP) for basic pilot training; CT-157 Siskin II for advanced fixed-wing and jet preparation; CT-145E Expeditor II (Beechcraft King Air 260) for multi-engine training; CT-153 Juno (Airbus H135) for helicopter training; and CT-142Q Citadel (De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400) for training air combat systems officers and airborne electronic sensor operators.
One of the first two Pilatus PC-21s departs Stans in Switzerland bound for Canada on September 14, 2026. These first aircraft mark the start of a new chapter in Canada’s Future Aircrew Training (FAcT) program. Pilatus
Paquet, the No. 431 Air Demonstration Squadron boss, said all Tutors are to be flown to IMP Aerospace in Trenton, Ontario, by March 31, 2027, where they will be disposed of. Some aircraft are expected to be preserved in museums or mounted on pedestals for public display, while others will be used as training aids for aircraft maintenance apprentices in Borden, Ontario.
“They’re not going to be flying. They’re not going to be flyable,” Paquet said.
Snowbirds team lead “Match” Hatta hopes to contribute his test-pilot experience to the transition, including testing the replacement aircraft and developing the new demonstration program.
“I would love to contribute to the team in terms of seeing them through the transition,” he said. “If I’m able to use my test background as well in helping that out, testing the new show, testing the new airplanes, and passing it on to a new boss down the road, then I’d love to do that.”
Royal Canadian Air Force CT-114 Tutor pilots with the Canadian Forces Snowbirds perform pre-flight checks during the Defenders of Liberty Air & Space Show at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, in 2019. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman Jacob B. Wrightsman
For Paquet, the immediate priority is completing the final display season without incident before turning to the next phase of the team’s history.
“I will definitely be emotional. The only thing I’m hoping for is that all the planes land safely, bring everybody home, and then we can check the box and say it was an extremely successful season. I brought everybody home, and we’ll move on to the next chapter.”
After more than six decades since its development began, the Tutor leaves behind a legacy spanning generations of military pilots and millions of spectators. Its final Snowbirds aerobatic display represents not simply the retirement of an aging aircraft, but the end of a long tradition in which the little jet trainer was one of the country’s most recognizable symbols of military flying and aerial performance.
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