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Ghosts of AC Flight 621 haunt Brampton field


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Flight 621's ghosts haunt Brampton field

Human bones found at 1970 crash site

Curious sift through remains of tragedy

JIM WILKES

STAFF REPORTER

Jul. 6, 2004. 06:35 AM

Thirty-four years after the crash of an Air Canada jet, a Brampton field is giving up ghosts of Flight 621.

Human bones and chunks of fuselage have been pushed to the surface of a sprawling soybean field and collected over the past two years by a small number of people.

They say they've tried unsuccessfully to get authorities to clear the field of jet debris and the remains of those who perished on a sun-splashed summer morning in 1970.

All 109 people aboard the stretch DC-8 died when the aircraft slammed into a farm field south of the village of Castlemore on July 5 that year.

The flight had left Montreal bound for Los Angeles, with a stopover in Toronto. But the co-pilot prematurely deployed wind-deflecting spoilers on approach, forcing the plane to bounce on to the runway too soon and tearing away one of its four big engines.

The captain valiantly tried to recover and guide the wounded jet around for another landing attempt, but the plane lost another engine and part of a wing and nosed into the field northeast of the airport about three minutes later.

"Human remains should be treated with dignity and respect, no matter how long ago this happened," said Paul Cardin, who has picked up dozens of skull, leg and arm bone fragments, and artefacts that have been pushed to the surface of the field by frost and rain and farm machinery.

While some might question whether macabre motives led him to search for crash remains, Cardin says it's simply a matter of giving the dead their due. "These were people and many of them were Air Canada employees," he said.

Cardin, a job coach who trains people with disabilities, and Vancouver author Joe Verna are writing a book about the crash they hope to publish in time for the 35th anniversary next year.

Cardin was just a kid when the crash occurred but vividly remembers the pictures in the Star and Toronto Telegram.

"They were the most horrific pictures I saw as a child," he recalled. "I was mesmerized by the fact that something like that could happen."

He located the crash site two years ago. "I strolled out into the field and so much stuff was right there on the surface," he said.

Among more than 50 kilograms of wreckage and bones, he has found a bent Air Canada fork, dinner china with the airline logo, wiring, hydraulic cables and markers for seats in row 11 of the aircraft.

Others have joined the hunt.

Rebecca Reid, 21, of Georgetown, found bones and dozens of fuselage pieces. "It's eerie and exciting at the same time," she said on a recent afternoon searching the field. "It's history and I feel excitement when I find something, but at the same time it's like walking over somebody's grave."

Tom Stone agrees.

A former Toronto police officer whose father worked for Air Canada and was on the original crash site team, the 51-year-old Brampton man is somehow drawn to the dusty field that rolls toward the West Humber River, a stone's throw west of Gore Rd., north of Highway 7.

"I remember when the accident happened and then, in 1975, my dad brought me out here because he'd worked the crash site," Stone said.

Last year, he was driving by and wondered what had been done to mark the place where so many died in what was the most deadly air crash in Canadian history at the time.

"There are monuments in Nova Scotia for the Swissair crash and in Gander for the crash that killed all those American soldiers. I guess I wonder why nothing was ever put up here."

He and Cardin have asked Air Canada to erect a monument.

But the airline says it did, at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, where five caskets of unidentified remains were interred after the crash. "We wish to express our heartfelt condolences to the surviving family members and that is the spirit for the monument that Air Canada erected ... very shortly after this tragic incident," said airline spokesperson John Reber.

Stone contacted Cardin on the Internet and last year made the first of a few trips into the huge field, part of which is for sale. The land is destined to be part of a future housing development.

Although the finds haven't spurred property owners to ask authorities for a cleanup, one owner recently sent Cardin a letter warning him not to trespass on the site again.

But Cardin and Stone hope part of the property, perhaps flood plain land that can't be built upon, could be set aside for parkland and a memorial.

"I couldn't believe the amount of debris and bones just sitting on the field. It was absolutely incredible," Stone said, reaching down to retrieve a piece of aircraft window sticking out of the soil.

"The dignity of the people who died here should be preserved," Stone said. "It's a moral thing."

On a recent walk through the sloping field, a Star reporter who joined Cardin and Stone also found bones and dozens of pieces of metal fuselage.

Some were near a crippled tree that stands like a lone sentinel to the crash. It was on one of its branches that part of a flight attendant's uniform hung so eerily the morning of the crash.

"A lot of people get weird feelings when they stand by that tree," said Carol Parr, whose home is west of the crash site.

The DC-8 was on its downward spiral when it passed over her home that morning.

Part of a wing and an engine landed on the acre of land where she and husband Gord still live on Goreway Dr. Another piece of wing hit her mother's home down the road.

"It just went over our house and BOOM!" Parr said.

"It was a Sunday morning, very sunny and warm. We always had planes going over the house because we're on the flight path.

"But this time you could tell that something definitely was wrong.... We saw the shadow of the plane, then saw the plane. The wing was on fire and we watched it right until it went into the ground. We knew it was going to crash ... We hoped there'd be survivors, but we knew that would be impossible."

In the past year, Parr, 54, has found bones, dentures and an Air Canada knife. "It's really unbelievable after all these years; I never would have expected to find pieces of people out there," she said.

"That place should have been cleaned up a lot better. I know that if it was my relative's bones, I'd be really upset.

"I think there should be a memorial, a monument or something there," she said.

Stone and Cardin said they've repeatedly called Air Canada about the situation and said three airline managers visited the site with them last year and videotaped debris they found.

"We do take these matters very seriously and when concerns were recently raised, we did contact the Toronto coroner's office to seek their advice," said Air Canada's Reber.

"They concluded there was no reason to take action."

Lucie Vignola, a spokesperson with Transport Canada in Ottawa, said long-standing agreements state that at an air crash site, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents, is responsible for removing parts of the plane.

The local coroner's office is responsible for ensuring human remains are removed, she said.

Cardin recently handed over nearly 50 bone fragments to regional coroner Dr. William Lucas. Dr. Jim Cairns, Ontario's deputy chief coroner, said between 20 and 30 of the fragments were determined to be human after examination in Toronto by an anthropologist.

A team of anthropology students mapped the site last year to ensure it wasn't the site of an ancient Indian settlement, Cairns said. "We're considering these bone fragments as being consistent with coming from the crash," he said.

"Small bits may continue to surface. That was 1970. Obviously, in a more sophisticated age, we would hope to be able to clear the site more thoroughly."

But he said that even today, the explosive nature of such a crash would make it difficult to find every bit of human remains.

Cairns said once the coroner's office had finished with the bones they would be cremated.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My Dad & I saw the bounce, and the sudden sharp descent on the go-around while driving home from flying our Cherokee. I was weeks away from being old enough to join the Air Cadets. I forget how we got up to the site, although I remember my Dad driving like snot along Indian Line, over the speed limit for the first time in my life.

I'm sure that my Dad knew it was non-survivable, but being a pilot... It looked of course, nothing like an aircraft. A torso in one of the elm trees was one of the few visably human things around. A skirt marked it as one of the FA's.

Over the last 20-odd thousand hours, my career has been for the most part, fun and enjoyable; the crews I fly with, pleasant and professional. But at the end of the day, this one afternoon, 34 years ago, has had a huge impact on the way I approach: each day, each flight, and the training or indoctination of a new driver.

While we all have our workplace crises going on (at WJ, AC's family of airlines, or any of the hundreds of smaller operators around the globe) we would do well to remember that we have a different bottom line that we must meet, no matter what the company's is doing.

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I don't wish to open old wounds or beat upon a bruise, but the article would have you believe that the co-pilot was responsible for this tragedy.

" But the co-pilot prematurely deployed wind-deflecting spoilers on approach, forcing the plane to bounce on to the runway too soon and tearing away one of its four big engines."

This statement is a bit simplistic.

A little background: the ground spoilers, which deploy on touchdown, triggered by wheel spin on that model, were armed by pulling up and forward on a lever as part of the before landing check, usually done at about 2000 feet above ground. Plenty of altitude to recover from an inadvertant deployment. (Something that was widely believed to be impossible, ground spoilers in the air) The Captain in question wanted and briefed for the spoilers to be armed "on the flare" contrary to SOP. (The reasons for this are for another post.)

The F/O aquiesced to the Captains request however when he went to arm the spoilers as the aircraft was over the runway threshold the spoilers deployed resulting in an immediate loss of lift and a very hard contact with the runway. On spoiler deployment the Captain applied full power which retracted the spoilers and as the aircraft bounced there was enough power to become airborne for a go around. Unfortunately the impact was hard enough to cause the right outboard engine to contact the runway and the engine and pylon separated from the wing causing damage and a subsequent fire which caused the wing to fail and loss of control of the aircraft.

F/O George Gyselink died in that accident and while there was a sometimes bitter debate at the time I believe that you could say that if the standard SOPs had been followed the accident would not have occurred.

I would suggest that the fact that the SOPs did not change after the accident (but they were enforced, big time) would bear out this statement.

I was around when this happened with a very good friend on the flight as crew so it tends to stick in the mind.

Edited by Innuendo
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Guest gpsapr

.........."we ve lost a wing."

END OF TAPE

After reading that, I got a chill down my spine.

Edited by gpsapr
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I remember that day well, I was all of 9 years old, my father went into a depression after the accident, he had worked on the aircraft before the flight out of YUL and had a close friend of his on board.

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I would like to apologise for my error in naming George Gyselink as the F/O.

It was of course Don Rowland. While I feel a bit red in the face after comments about things sticking in the mind, I still feel that the press article unfairly leaves the impression that his actions alone were the cause.

My friend in the crew by the way was cabin crew, not flight deck.

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  • 17 years later...

As a magnet is to metal , some spirits do try and communicate with me.  When I was in that area unknowing of what took place many years ago , I asked a new resident to that area " Why do I feel like something extremely bad happened right over there ? "  She told me why,  I froze in full sadness, my body turned very cold .

I decided to asked the area through my mind , if anyone could speak to me , and one voice are several voices said in spiritual soul language " We're all okay, there's no more that needs to be done "

I needed a long rest from the experience, but still I send my compassion and sympathy forward .

That is one of my many experiences with what some would call " Spiritual Contact " and maybe closure as well .

Thank you , for  your time 

~ R. L. Page'

 

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