Unforgettable disaster

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2012 (5207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Eight died that day.

Oldtimers recall how the small plane, a Mark V Norseman out of Winnipeg, lifted off the Wapekeka runway, then banked and bucked.

The plane jerked mid-air before the pilot pulled the nose back to point to the nearest lake.

That body of water, Sandy Bank Lake in northwestern Ontario, was the only shot at survival. The drama played out before horrified witnesses, helpless below.

The Transair Ltd. flight dove into trees metres short of the lake. Another plane identified the burning wreckage and a ground search trekked through dense bush at night for survivors.

All aboard died. Federal transport officials, the Ontario Provincial Police flew to the remote site. Historical archives show no record for the cause of the crash. The pilot’s obituary says the flight was a routine run he’d done countless times.

It’s perhaps no surprise the people of Wapekeka haven’t forgot that day.

Winnipeg consultant Rob Bruce-Barron, who works with the Wapekepa First Nation, said the fly-in Oji-Cree community an hour north of Sioux Lookout was devastated.

Most of the dead were friends and relatives from neighbouring First Nations.

Pilot Maurice Dubois of Sioux Lookout, a Second World War air force veteran, was well-known and well-liked. His obit says he was on a milk run by air of northern Hudson Bay Co. posts. Wapakeka was a stop on the run.

The crash left a mark on a generation, Wapekeka First Nation official Brennan Sainnawap said.

For 53 years, Wapekeka preserved the site, cutting a bush road into the wreckage.

“It’s a way to show respect. And it’s a way to show our young people to have respect for our past,” Sainnawap said.

These days, a brilliant white cross and an old weathered wooden one jut above willows that weave up through the plane’s metal remains.

This spring, Wapekeka will finish clearing a circle for eight standing stones. They’ll be raised as a permanent memorial in August, with a pair of standing stones to mark a portal.

Residents have selected monoliths formed naturally into the shape of standing stones. Some are two metres or more tall and a metre thick, and they’re meant to last.

The project is close to the heart of Wapekeka’s Chief Norman Brown, a boy of eight when the plane went down.

“Our chief was there at the time of the crash. He seen the smoke and it’s always been on his mind,” Sainnawap said.

For two years, Sainnawap and Bruce-Barron painstakingly picked through history for the descendants of the dead. Relatives are thrilled that a standing stone with a name plaque will mark their dead.

With one elusive exception.

Relatives seem to have vanished from the official records for Hudson Bay Company clerk Denis John Martin, a 23-year-old man who died that day.

Some records identified the man as a “Mr. Harris,” but a 1959 Hudson Bay Co. newsletter Moccasin Telegraph says the clerk was Martin, and the depth of detail in the entry convinced both men that Martin is their man.

Martin had been posted to a string of Hudson Bay posts in northwestern Ontario and he was in line for a promotion at the time of the crash. His permanent address was with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. W.G.H. Martin, on Melrose Avenue West in Transcona.

Half a century is a long time, but both Sainnawap and Bruce-Barron hope someone remembers the kid clerk.

“Finding the relatives of this person would let us inform them of what we’re doing on their behalf,” Sainnawap said. “We could invite them up for the opening.”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca