North Star crash took Manitoba military man's life

In the annals of both sports and Canadian aviation, much has been written about the crash of Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 810, on Dec. 9, 1956. On a day of remembering, it's worthwhile to think about this crash once more.

The plane was a North Star, built by Canadair, and it carried 59 passengers and three crew members. It took off from Vancouver, bound for Calgary, with later stops in Regina, Winnipeg and Toronto. But the flight ended abruptly when icing and turbulence caused the plane to crash into Mount Slesse near Cranbrook, B.C.

The crash site was so remote that search teams were not able to reach it until the following spring. The wreckage of the aircraft was left on the mountainside as a memorial to the 62 people who died that day. At the time, it was the worst aviation disaster in Canadian history, and only three crashes since then have taken a greater human toll than Flight 810.

CFL players perished

The world of sports remembers the crash because among the dead were five football players returning home from the East-West all-star game in Vancouver. Four of them played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders Mel Becket, Mario DeMarco, Ray Syrnyk and Gordon Sturtridge, who was born and raised in Winnipeg. Gordon was travelling on the doomed flight with his wife, Mildred. The other player who died was Calvin Jones of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. 1956 had been his rookie season in Canadian football, after a brilliant career at the University of Iowa, where quarterback Kenny Ploen was one of his teammates.

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Jones could have returned to Winnipeg on an earlier flight, with Blue Bomber teammate Bud Grant, but he overslept and ended up on Flight 810 instead. Another player who had a ticket on Flight 810 was legendary Edmonton Eskimo fullback Normie Kwong, who would eventually serve as lieutenant-governor of Alberta. He decided to stay an extra day in Vancouver to spend time with a young cheerleader named Mary who would become his wife and the mother of their four children.

Less well-known are the others who died on Flight 810. Their names can be found on a memorial cairn that was erected down the mountain on Slesse Road.

Winnipeg Rifles soldier died

As we observe Remembrance Day, it is timely to recall the life of Maj. Philip Gower of the Queen's Own Rifles, who died that day at the age of 41, leaving behind his wife, Anne, and their four children. He was born in Regina in 1915, but much of his upbringing was spent in Manitoba's Interlake near Teulon. When war broke out in 1939, Philip joined the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and was with them with the rank of captain on June 6, 1944, when they came ashore on Juno Beach in Normandy. Gower was cited for bravery on D-Day and later received the Military Medal from King George VI. He also spent time as a prisoner of war in Germany.

Gower was later promoted to major and served with the Canadian Army in the Korean conflict. After that war ended in 1953, he was part of a multinational force that help supervise the truce in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. His son Philip Gower, who now lives in Los Angeles, recalls that the family was living in Calgary when their father ended up heading for home on Flight 810. He had done some Christmas shopping and was bearing gifts for the children as he boarded the plane in Vancouver that morning.

His original plan had been to travel home by train from Vancouver, but getting through Canada Customs caused a significant delay in his journey, which played a fateful role in the major deciding to buy a seat on the doomed plane. The younger Mr. Gower also recalls that his mother later had some difficulty collecting her widow's pension from Ottawa, possibly related to the five months that elapsed before the crash site was reached on Mount Slesse. Mrs. Gower was helped in this matter by another Manitoba military figure, Maj. Cliff Chadderton, who served as CEO of the War Amputations of Canada.

Many Manitoba connections

Chadderton lost a leg while serving with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles in Holland in 1944. After the war, he became the leading advocate on all issues involving Canada's veterans for many years.

As a broadcast journalist, I came to regard Cliff Chadderton as a prime source and my go-to guy on all stories relating to veterans. Once I discovered that we had both graduated from Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, Cliff and I became true friends until his death two years ago at the age of 93. Mrs. Anne Gower died at the Hunter Memorial Hospital in Teulon on Oct. 19, 2000, at the age of 84, 44 years after the death of her husband on Mount Slesse.

• Cliff Chadderton of War Amps dies at 94

While researching the story of Maj. Philip Gower, I was reminded once more how frequently our lives intersect with others, especially in Winnipeg, it seems. My father, Andrew Currie, was a football Hall of Famer, and had many personal connections with the five players who died aboard Flight 810. As I looked at the photo of the memorial that stands on Slesse Road, I spotted the name Harald Cleven. I suddenly remembered that his son Jeff Cleven, who recently passed away in Ontario, was a classmate of mine at St. John's College at the University of Manitoba.