On April 28, 1947, Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 3 took off from Lethbridge, Alberta on a routine flight to Vancouver. It never arrived.
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.
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.
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.
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
Crew:
Captain W.G. Pike, Vancouver
First Officer A.A. Stewart, Vancouver
Flight Attendant: 24-year-old Helen Saisbury, New Westminster
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