The pioneer broadcaster felt the need to disappear completely after a stellar career on TV and radio. One of her strongest memories came during her years flying the CKEY traffic copter. It came at a time when women were barely on the radio, let alone up in the air. 

And she ran into a lot of turbulence - just not in the sky 

"In the '60s, a 23-year-old Petty became a traffic reporter for Toronto radio station CKEY and "manned" the helicopter. Her colleagues weren't confident she was right for the job. “They had a pool going on about how long I would last," she recalls.

Petty says her male colleagues would yell and threaten her, but she was used to anger — her father had a history with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from World War II.

“I knew they couldn’t hit me, so I waited until they finished ranting and raving. Then I would be like, ‘OK, now what?’" she says. "The only way to beat a man is to do a better job than he’s doing. And I was a damn good pilot.”

TV icon Dini Petty, 81, 'became invisible' after walking away from her daytime TV show: 'I got away from people'