New memorial to follow 50th anniversary of Linwood Street plane crash

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This article was published 24/06/2022 (1212 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Friday marked the 50th anniversary of a deadly plane crash in Winnipeg that still scars Bunibonibee Cree Nation.

On June 24, 1972, eight students — six attending Stonewall Collegiate Institute, two from a residential school in Portage la Prairie — and pilot Wilbur Scott Coughlin died after their Ilford Riverton Airways flight crashed, shortly after takeoff, in a vacant lot between two houses on Linwood Street.

Mary Rita Canada, Wilkie Muskego, Roy and Deborah Sinclair, Iona Weenusk, Margaret Robinson, Ethel Grieves, and Rosalie Balfour (a Norway House member who grew up in Bunibonibee) were en route to the First Nation (then known as Oxford House) some 590 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

At the time, Bunibonibee students had to travel outside of their community to attend high school. Following the tragedy, the 1972 Memorial High School was established in Oxford House.

“The loss of these young people connects strongly with Canada’s dark past,” Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee said Friday in a news release.

“These young people from Bunibonibee were required to leave their home community to pursue their education. Our young people should be able to complete their education in their own First Nations.”

The Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada announced its intention this week to establish a memorial at the site of the crash.

“As soon as we, at the museum, heard this tragic story from our Indigenous curator, Niigaan Sinclair, we felt a strong responsibility to help honour the victims,” Terry Slobodian, museum president, chief executive officer and curator, said in a release.

Vanessa Desorcy, marketing specialist at the Winnipeg-based museum, told the Free Press it currently has a few panels about the crash in its Northern Connections exhibit. The funding for the new memorial was secured with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Funds through Manitoba Sport, Culture and Heritage.

“It’s a small step towards acknowledging the ways in which residential schools affected so many, recognizing the lives that were lost, and making people aware of how people were impacted,” Desorcy said.

A memorial plaque listing the names of the students and pilot will be permanently installed at Linwood Street in spring 2023. While memorials exist at Long Plain First Nation and Portage La Prairie, the plaque will be the first in Winnipeg.

In September 2021, the Free Press interviewed family and community members about the tragedy.

Sarah McKay recalled waiting for the sounds of the aircraft so she could meet her older sister Margaret.

“That day was so beautiful. When I did my house chores, I said to my mom, ‘I want to go swimming.’ I went swimming and I kept looking towards the southern area of the sky to see if I could see a plane coming, but no sign — no sign at all,” McKay told the Free Press.

“I would go home and wait, thinking, ‘She should’ve been home already.’”

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca