A aircraft flying from Lethbridge to Vancouver in 1947 disappeared with out a hint, remaining an unsolved thriller till 1994 when a hiker led searchers to the crash web site
On April 28, 1947, Trans-Canada Airways Flight 3 took off from Lethbridge, Alta. on a routine flight to Vancouver. It by no means arrived.
I used to be strolling round Rice Lake not too long ago and stopped to pay my respects on the two boulders close to the doorway. These boulders are a memorial for the 15 passengers and crew of Trans-Canada Airways Flight 3.
All appeared regular for the dual engine Lockheed Lodestar because it approached Vancouver. Simply after 11 p.m., Capt. Invoice Pike, a former fighter pilot, radioed Vancouver Airport that he was over Maple Ridge, giving visitors management his place earlier than touchdown.
After which in what appears like an episode from the tv present Manifest, the aircraft, the passengers and the crew disappeared for the following 47 years.
I used to be engaged on the town desk on the Vancouver Solar in September of 1994 when the thriller was lastly solved. Information got here in that the aircraft had been found in a deep gully between Mount Seymour and Mount Elsay, 30 kilometres northeast of the airport, beneath heavy first-growth cowl. Additionally discovered was a gold ring, bracelet, a lady’s watch, a cigarette case and a lighter.
Mike Neale, the 20-year-old who led searchers to the positioning in 1994, had truly discovered the aircraft two years earlier together with his pal Doug Keir. The 2 North Vancouver males assumed that it was outdated wreckage discovered way back. It wasn’t till they confirmed images to historians on the Canadian Museum of Flight that they discovered that they’d stumbled throughout the lacking aircraft.
The memorial was erected 30 years in the past on April 28, 1995, and positioned in view of the crash web site. One of many boulders provides the situation and story behind the doomed flight, whereas the opposite lists the names of the passengers and crew.
Jane Warren and Margaret Hamblin, each 21, have been pupil nurses at Vancouver Normal Hospital. Margaret Trerise, 22, and 25-year-old Anatasia (Nell) Lesiuk have been flight attendants travelling on stand-by. David Vance was a lumber purchaser from Winnipeg. Marjorie and Cecil Nugent, additionally from Winnipeg, have been beginning their honeymoon. Victor Armand was an govt with Well-known Gamers, and Lance Millor was the divisional supervisor of Aro Gear. Each have been from Vancouver. James Woolf was on a enterprise journey from the U.Okay. The opposite two males have been Clarence Reaper of Quebec, and a W. Robson from Winnipeg.
Twenty-three-year-old Audrey (Tavender) Brandon was speculated to be one in all three crew members on the flight that evening. Her daughter Dale Brandon says: “She advised me she was strolling out the door, her suitcase packed, uniform on, after which the cellphone rang. That they had bumped her off the flight.”
Audrey was advised that she’d been changed by Helen Saisbury. The 2 ladies have been good pals and had graduated from St. Paul’s nursing division collectively the earlier yr.
Audrey had made a number of flights with Pike and his co-pilot Bunty Stewart. It was the times whenever you needed to be a certified nurse to be a flight attendant, and go away your job if you happen to received married. TCA (which morphed into Air Canada in 1965) didn’t like its flight crews getting as much as “hanky panky,” Audrey advised Dale, so they might incessantly change the crews round.
It saved her life.
Audrey stayed with the airline till she married in 1950 and robotically misplaced her job. It wasn’t a straightforward resolution for her, says Dale, one in all Audrey’s three youngsters, as a result of she cherished flying.
“It was like being a film star. Everybody knew one another, and the crews have been very shut knit,” she says.
Audrey advised Dale that after she was on a DC-4 from Vancouver when fog closed in. The aircraft misplaced a motor over the Rockies and needed to make an emergency touchdown at a navy airstrip in Kimberley.
One other time the aircraft needed to return to Vancouver when a drunk passenger handed out over Hope and Audrey couldn’t discover a pulse.
“He fooled everybody as he didn’t look like impaired when he boarded the plane,” she advised Dale. “He awakened on the best way to Vancouver and he was not happy.”
Audrey died in August of 2004 at age 80.
Eve Lazarus is a North Vancouver resident and creator. Her newest e-book is Beneath Darkish Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Eire Shipwreck. [email protected]
