Sorrow returns to Resolute area
Kin remember a year later
RESOLUTE, Nunavut —Sorrow and remembrance will hang over a newly built memorial near a tiny Arctic hamlet Monday as the families of 12 people killed in a fiery plane crash gather on the pebbled tundra where the jet went down one year ago.
“Just a simple few prayers said and we’ll say our goodbyes,” said Aziz Kheraj, a hotel owner in Resolute, who lost friends, employees and a six-year-old granddaughter when the First Air 737 that he had chartered flew into a hill near the airport.
“Every day’s a tough day. Every day is different. Some days are harder than others, but all you do is put your head down and plug away. Not much else one can do.”
The pain of the crash spread from this dot on the northernmost shores of the Northwest Passage like a stain across the whole country. The victims were from the Maritimes, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Yellowknife and across the north.
Many of their family members flew to Resolute, sponsored by First Air, to spend the weekend creating the monument to their memory — a concrete pedestal adorned with a bronze plaque.
First Air also plans to hold a private ceremony in Yellowknife for the families and co-workers of the four crew members who died on flight 6560.
The company said its 1,000 employees across the Arctic will observe a moment of silence at 11:42 a.m., the exact moment the plane struck the hillside. The impact split the jet into three pieces and flung debris and flaming wreckage across the rugged terrain.
Three passengers miraculously survived: the dead girl’s sevenyear-old sister, Gabrielle Pelky, and geologists Nicole Williamson and Robin Wyllie.
“The memories are still full of raw emotion for everyone . . . enough to make a grown man cry,” Wyllie, 49, wrote in a letter published Friday in a northern newspaper.
“Not a day goes by that we do not recall this terrible event and the tragedy it inflicted upon so many lives.”
Residents who heard the loud bang and spotted the flames and smoke that followed rushed on ATVs to the crash site to look for possible survivors. They were joined by a large military contingent that happened to be in the area on annual manoeuvres that ironically were to include a mock plane crash.
The army’s After Action report on the rescue effort, obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information legislation, gives officers on the site high marks for their response.
A military helicopter was dispatched to the scene within 12 minutes of the crash, the report says. A search team from that chopper and one from the coast guard found the three survivors and transported them to a military field hospital that had been set up for the exercise.
The survivors were airlifted by a military plane to Iqaluit. They were later sent to hospitals in Ottawa.
But the report makes no mention of the cause of the crash or the military’s role at the airport when it happened. Several lawsuits lay at least partial blame on the military for taking control of the airport that day.
The small airport is normally an uncontrolled airspace with no air traffic control service. Pilots navigate themselves onto the runway.
The suits detail how the military made an agreement with Nav Canada, Canada’s civilian air traffic authority, to establish a temporary air traffic control tower and guide in all aircraft.