From: Ron Foreman [ron@ronforeman.com]
Sent: August 7, 2005 2:59 PM
To: ‘ibrown@globeandmail.com’
Cc: Barbara Foreman (light.wave@shaw.ca)
Subject: Aug 6 – July 1970 Air Canada crash
Hi Ian,
I enjoyed your article “Into Grim Air” but I think the crash occurred on a Sunday not a Monday.
I was living in Montreal and my sister was flying to British Columbia (where she has been ever since.) At the time a ticket to Vancouver allowed you to embark from either Montreal or Toronto so when she was offered a lift to Toronto a few days before with friends she took it. However she forgot her ticket at home and asked me to go to the airport and make arrangements to replace it. I was at the Air Canada ticket counter in Dorval airport on that beautiful sunny Sunday morning, July 5, 1970. I assume that I was surrounded by the passengers and crew who boarded that flight.
I went home and played a game of softball with my buddies in Kirkland and returned to the house to hear the awful news.
Some other tidbits about this accident:
- Pete Henderson, the pilot, was a member of the Beaconsfield Golf Club.
- Walter Cronkite quoted the line from the black box, ‘Sorry Pete’ on the CBS Evening News.
- There is a monument to several of the victims in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. Many were families with young children on their way to LA, perhaps to Disneyland.
- I believe that as a result of this accident aircraft were subsequently made so that the spoilers could not be deployed until the aircraft was on the ground.
- My former father-in-law, an aeronautical engineer, always said he would prefer to fly in bad weather; the crew was more alert.
- Even today, parts of wreckage and human remains continue to work their way to the surface of the field where the crash occurred.
Sincerely
Ron Foreman