Into the Abyss (2 page)

Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist who coined the phrase “follow your bliss,” wrote extensively about man’s quest for meaning. According to Campbell, all heroic journeys, from the time of the ancients to the present day, begin with a call to adventure—a challenge or opportunity to face the unknown and gain something of physical or spiritual value. This call often comes in the form of a transformative crisis, an event that kicks out our foundations of complacency and makes us examine universal questions of existence: Why was I born? What happens when I die? How can I overcome my fears and weaknesses and be happy?

Few of us will ever face the kind of life-and-death trauma experienced by the men in this story. Their ordeal forced them to confront the precious and limited nature of their existence on earth.
In the words of Campbell, they entered the forest “at the darkest point where there is no path.” How these four men found their way forward that night and in the years that followed is both remarkable and inspirational.

Scott Deschamps—the rookie RCMP officer who had boarded the flight handcuffed to Paul Archambault—was no exception. Unlike Erik, however, it took me three years to persuade Scott to be interviewed.
Perhaps more than any of the survivors, he had deliberately, painstakingly, rebuilt his life as a result of his experience. His resistance to share his story, Scott told me, was rooted in its deeply personal nature. He had spent more than a decade trying to understand what had happened to him the night of the crash. He eventually agreed to be interviewed only because of my family connection to the story.

Researching Paul Archambault’s life was far more difficult. How does one go about unearthing details about a vagabond who’d been drifting since he was fifteen? Thinking it was a long shot, I placed ads in newspapers on either side of the country—one in the city where Paul was living at the time of the crash and the other in the town where he’d grown up some 3,800 kilometres away. To my amazement, my phone started ringing almost immediately. Those who called not only remembered Paul, they told me that he had made a lasting impression on them. Though Paul’s parents were dead, an aunt in his hometown of Aylmer, Quebec, contacted me. When I met her, I soon realized that she and her husband hadn’t been close to Paul since he was a child. Nor were they in touch with other members of his family, with the exception of a younger brother who had been institutionalized for much of his early life. They didn’t know the brother’s whereabouts, but told me that he called from time to time.

“When he does, could you give him my number?” I asked without hope. Months later Paul’s brother called. Miraculously, in his possession was the tattered sixty-page manuscript my father had spoken of a quarter century earlier.

By that point, the story had sunk its hooks into me. At its underbelly was a compelling and dangerous truth about the commuter airline industry. Across the globe, barely a week passes without news of a small plane crash. Contrary to public perception, commuter airlines
represent the largest sector of commercial aviation in North America and perhaps the world, accounting for more than half of all domestic flights. In Canada, a country characterized by its sparse population and rugged, remote terrain, small planes are a lifeline for residents in isolated, northern communities like the one in Alberta where I grew up. Commuter operations are the workhorse carriers that connect thousands of people to larger population centres and provide a vital source of supplies and medical support.

Bush flying, as it is still known in Canada’s north, has always been a dangerous business—a hard-driving, high-risk profession ranked as one of the deadliest in North America. The pilots are often young and idealistic, driven by a desire for freedom and adventure. With few exceptions they are trying to work their way toward careers with major airlines. First, however, they must pay their dues by building logbook hours flying for small airlines. Some pay with their lives. Inside Erik’s battered flight bag, he’d kept a file thick with articles on dozens of small plane crashes that had occurred in the years since his tragedy. “It’s frustrating to see it happen over and over again,” he told me.

The more I read about the commuter airline industry, or heard about yet another small plane crash, the more shocked I became.
A major investigative report on Canadian aviation incidents between 2000 and 2005—before the federal government reduced public access to its aviation occurrence reports—noted that during that five-year period there were literally thousands of reported incidents involving danger or potential danger to aircraft passengers. How was it that the flying public wasn’t in an uproar?

Typically it’s only when large jets fall from the sky that people take notice. Outraged by the body count, they demand government investigations and seek ironclad assurances that the airline at fault addresses safety concerns. Meanwhile, small passenger planes continue to crash with frightening regularity. But apart from the loved ones of those
who die, few sound the alarm. When they do, it’s a faint cry in the wilderness that goes unheeded. Even fewer consider the pilots in these crashes—often young and frequently scared—who battle fatigue, terrain, weather or mechanical malfunction on a daily basis.

As is sadly the case when one tries to apportion blame for the vagaries of fate and circumstance, I came to see Dale Wells, the owner of the airline involved in my father’s crash, as the villain in this tragedy. It took me years to summon the courage to talk to Dale. Our eventual rendezvous at an Edmonton restaurant completely reversed my opinion. Dale was both humble and forthright. Like Erik, he had also kept meticulous records. After our meeting he walked me to his car in the parking lot and handed over a massive box filled with files and documents.

“Say hello to your father,” he said as we parted. “I always thought he was a wonderful man.”

My father didn’t live to see me finish this book. In April 2008 he was diagnosed with cancer. He died less than five months later. As I was preparing to board the flight home to Alberta to be at his bedside, I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to bring.

“Your manuscript,” he said.

I’d written only a few rough chapters, but it didn’t matter. He insisted.

I spent two days at the hospital. And during those two days I read to him. It was the last time we were together.

This book is my tribute to my father, Larry Shaben, and to Erik Vogel, Scott Deschamps and Paul Archambault. Their strength, courage and dignity are an inspiring example of how individuals can journey from the depths of tragedy and loss to the riches of lives begun anew.

E
rik Vogel was in over his head and didn’t know how to get out. There were half a dozen reasons why the twenty-four-year-old rookie pilot didn’t feel comfortable flying tonight, but with his job at Wapiti Aviation on the line—or so it seemed to him—none of them counted. Erik had been in and out of cloud for most of his outbound flight from the small northern Canadian city of Grande Prairie, Alberta, and had watched wet snow continue to fall. The wheels of his ten-seater plane had touched down at the municipal airport in Edmonton, Canada’s most northerly provincial capital, just as the last light of day was leaving the murky sky. He was running behind schedule and working hard to make up time. Standing 6′3″ with a lean, athletic build, warm brown eyes and a wavy crop of dark hair, Erik appeared every inch a young, attractive and confident aviator. Inside, however, he was scared.

After unloading his passengers and their luggage, he’d crossed the tarmac to the terminal building to collect his outgoing passengers. He glanced at his watch: 6:40 p.m. That gave him only twenty minutes for ticketing and check-in, refuelling, and loading the luggage and
passengers for the return flight north. There was no way he’d be off the ground by his scheduled departure time of 7:00.

His only hope was that tonight would be a repeat of last night and that there wouldn’t be passengers bound for the small communities of High Prairie and Fairview, which had tiny airports with no air traffic control. He also prayed that by some miracle he’d pick up a co-pilot. As he approached the check-in counter Erik was overjoyed to see Linda Gayle, Wapiti’s Fort McMurray agent, already selling tickets. Wapiti retained Linda on a part-time basis for the Fort McMurray flights and she wasn’t obliged to help out pilots flying other routes, but tonight she’d decided to do him this favour.

“What have we got?”

“We’re fully booked,” she replied.

“So no chance of a co-pilot?”

Linda shook her head.

His stomach churning, Erik asked the question that had been plaguing him ever since he’d talked to the pilot who’d flown the morning schedule. “Any passengers bound for High Prairie?”

“Four,” Linda told him. “Plus two on standby.”

A town of 2,500 people 365 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, High Prairie was on the other side of a high ridge of rugged and densely wooded terrain known as Swan Hills. Because the airport had no control tower, regulations dictated that pilots could fly into High Prairie only in visual conditions, meaning when the weather was clear. The pilot on the a.m. sked had warned Erik that there was a lot of snow on the runway and he’d had a hard time taking off.

As Erik stood wondering how the hell he was going to manage the flight, two men approached. One, about 5′10″, bull-chested and casually dressed with a hedgehog coat of close-cropped auburn hair, dropped his shackled left hand heavily on the counter. Handcuffed to him was another man. Of similar height, he had a brawny build with
an unkempt mop of frizzy brown hair, and deep blue eyes that softened the strong angles of his face. Sideburns stretched like woolly carpets down either side of his cheekbones and above his upper lip, a generous arch of moustache curved over small, even teeth.

“Where do you want me to sit?” the first man asked. Below a prominent brow, green eyes regarded Erik intently as he explained that he was an RCMP officer escorting a prisoner to face charges in Grande Prairie.

Erik swallowed hard. He remembered the story of a prisoner getting loose on a charter flight out of Vancouver and trying to attack the pilot.

“At the very back,” he said, regarding the prisoner warily. The man exuded a nervous energy like a charged circuit, and wore only jeans, a wool-lined jean jacket and an open-collared shirt: not exactly appropriate for the weather.

“I’d like to board him first,” the cop said.

Erik nodded, then asked Linda to finish ticketing the passengers while he went to the nearby weather office to see if Luella Wood, High Prairie’s airport manager, had filed her customary 6 p.m. weather report. She had, and the news wasn’t good: the cloud deck was broken at 500 feet and overcast at 900. A visual approach required a 1000-foot ceiling and 3 miles’ visibility.

As he walked back to the counter, Erik surveyed the other passengers in the departure area: four men and two women heading home on a Friday night. He stepped behind the counter and grabbed the PA system mic.

“Attention, passengers on Wapiti Flight 402,” he announced. “I’m not sure whether we’re going to be able to land in High Prairie because the ceiling is so low. If we can’t, we’ll have to go on to Peace River because they have a controlled approach. If there are
any passengers headed for High Prairie who don’t want to take the flight, please let me know.”

Erik scanned the faces of the passengers in front of him. Regardless of the weather, they expected him to get them home. They weren’t going to give him an out. He ran a hand wearily across his forehead, trying to erase the tension that had settled there. He’d done what he could. At least if he overflew High Prairie, it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

As he walked outside to load the luggage, an icy wind whipped along the tarmac, wet flakes dampening his face. The airport—a dark triangle of land slashed out of the bald northern prairie—was shrouded in fog and beyond its muted southeastern border, the lights of downtown cast a dull violet glow. A collection of squat buildings flanked the airport’s southwestern perimeter and beside them silhouettes of airplanes perched like frozen birds, wings outstretched as if already in flight.

Erik took a deep, shuddering breath to calm his nerves and tried to focus on the positives. He’d warned his passengers about the flight, so there wouldn’t be any flak if he ended up taking High Prairie passengers on to Peace River. Linda had done the ticketing, so he’d been able to check the weather—a luxury he seldom had time for. He’d even had a dinner of sorts, eating the untouched half of a sandwich left by a Wapiti pilot who hadn’t had time to finish it.

Erik’s efforts to stay upbeat didn’t last. When he got to the plane, the fuelling service hadn’t yet arrived and he had to scramble to get the tanks filled. By the time they finished, he was behind schedule. He hastily piled some of the luggage into the plane’s nose compartment and then crammed the rest into the rear hold behind the seats. Though regulations required that he calculate the weight and balance for the aircraft, he didn’t bother. What difference would it make? Erik didn’t feel he could leave passengers or their luggage behind, and in winter conditions like tonight it would be foolish to skimp on fuel when he didn’t know whether he’d be able to get into
the uncontrolled airports on his route. He estimated the fully fuelled, nine-passenger flight would be overweight to the tune of about 200 kilograms, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. The queasy feeling in his stomach grew as he walked back to the terminal to escort the cop and his prisoner outside.