Definitions of Wyrd

It was November 29th, 1963 around 6 p.m. We had supper early as my parents planned an evening on the town in Ste. Thérèse to celebrate their wedding anniversary, as well as my mother’s birthday the following day. We had been living in Camp Bouchard for about a year then, deep in the woodlands north of the city towards St. Jerôme. It was dark and utterly pouring outside with nil visibility. I was heading upstairs to my room as my parents were dressing up to leave. Suddenly there were strange sounds overhead as the house shuddered. A cuckoo clock fell from the wall. I could distinctly hear a sizeable aircraft going into an engine stall. This was truly eerie, as the approach route to Dorval Airport was about 7 miles north of us. Their glimmer in the distance always caught my eye, as I would while away the time on the back doorstep. This one was way off course. I ran up to the window, but couldn’t see or hear anything more. Just a dismal red glow appeared from somewhere beyond the dense wood. My parents didn’t make much of it, and proceeded with their plans to leave for the evening. They were barely gone 20 minutes when they came back complaining that all the roads were blocked, and no one could leave the base. By all accounts a DC8 had crashed in a field just short of the woods at the main auto route. The fear was a forest fire as our camp was a large munitions depot. Mind you, it rained so heavily, there was little chance of that. Nonetheless, my father, being the camp engineering foreman, got called to the scene. In the weeks to follow he and his men had to dig up what was left of all 118 aboard. Two kids were witness to the scene from their farm on the other side of the autoroute, and claimed the aircraft exploded just above the ground. Needless to say, not much was found in one piece. It took three weeks to recover the bodies, assemble and identify them. After about a week of this the recovery team dwindled down to just my father and a forensic specialist from McGill. Although my father was not known to grim out easily, for about a year after that he couldn’t stand the sight of raw eggs. Indeed, to spare the graphic details it was not at all a pretty sight. In retrospect though, it was quite amazing that the crew managed to keep the plane aloft long enough to avoid hitting the camp. We could have easily been amongst the fatalities.