Every Place Has a Story

Remembering Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3

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On April 28, 1947, Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3 took off from Lethbridge, Alberta on a routine flight to Vancouver. It never arrived.

The memorial for TCA Flight 3, 1947. Eve Lazarus photo, 2021
Rice Lake:

A couple of Sundays ago, my friend Virginia and I went for a walk around North Vancouver’s Rice Lake. We stopped to pay our respects at the two boulders near the entrance. These boulders are a memorial for Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3. TCA—which eventually morphed into Air Canada—took off from Lethbridge, Alberta on April 28, 1947 on a routine flight to Vancouver. Just after 11:00 pm Captain Pike, a former fighter pilot, was flying over Maple Ridge and confirmed his approach to Vancouver International Airport. 

Vanished without a trace:

And, in what sounds like an episode from Manifest, the twin engine Lockheed Lodestar and the 15 passengers and crew disappeared for the next 47 years.

I was working on the city desk at the Vancouver Sun on September 29, 1994 when the mystery was finally solved. News came in that the plane had been discovered in a deep gully between Mount Seymour and Mount Elsay—30 kilometres northeast of the airport, under heavy first-growth cover. Also found was a gold ring, bracelet, a woman’s watch, cigarette case and lighter.

The Daily Province, April 29, 1947 via newspapers.com
Found by a hiker:

Mike Neale, the 20-year-old who led searchers to the site in 1994 actually found the plane two years earlier, he just assumed it was old wreckage that had been discovered years before. It wasn’t until he showed some of his photos to a historian at the Canadian Museum of Flight that they realized that he had stumbled across the missing TCA Flight 3. The memorial was erected on April 28, 1995 and dedicated to the 15 people who lost their lives.

Eve Lazarus photo, 2021

Anatasia Lesiuk and Margaret Trerise were young flight attendants heading to Vancouver for a few days of R&R. Jane Warren and Margaret Hamblin both 21 were returning to their jobs as student nurses at Vancouver General Hospital. David Vance was a lumber buyer from Winnipeg, Marjorie and Cecil Nugent also from Winnipeg were starting their honeymoon. Victor Armand was an executive with Famous Players in Vancouver.

Eve Lazarus photo, September 2021
PASSENGER list:

Anatasia Lesiuk, Trail

Margaret Trerise, Vancouver

Jane Warren, Weyburn, Sask

Margaret Hamblin, Qu’Appelle, Sask

David Vance, St. Vital, Manitoba

Lance Millor, Vancouver

James Hugh Woolf, London, England

W. Robson, Winnipeg

Victor Armand, Vancouver

Clarence Reaper, Westmount, Quebec

Marjorie Nugent, Winnipeg

Cecil Nugent, Winnipeg

Trans-Canada Airlines
TCA logo courtesy Jill Warland

Crew:  

Captain W.G. Pike, Vancouver

First Officer A.A. Stewart, Vancouver

Flight Attendant: 24-year-old Helen Saisbury, New Westminster

Trans-Canada Airlines
Courtesy Jill Warland
Related:

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