On July 8, 1965 a Canadian Pacific DC 6B, one of the big, reliable, four-engine workhorse planes of the C.P. Air fleet, took off from Vancouver with 46 passengers and six crew members on board. It was on a passenger run to Prince George, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake and Whitehorse. The first leg of the journey, to Prince George, was expected to take about 90 minutes.
Commercial air travel was relatively new, and for most of the passengers, this was their first flight. Many had dressed up for the occasion, and there was a sense of adventure as the boarding took place. Unlike today, there was no security screening of passengers, luggage, or carry-on bags, but both the boarding and take off went smoothly.
At 3:29 p.m., about 47 minutes into the flight, the cockpit crew did a routine check with Vancouver air control. They had passed over Ashcroft, flying at 4,900 metres, and were right on schedule for a timely arrival in Prince George. Less than 10 minutes later, something went horribly wrong. Vancouver control tried to contact Flight 21, but there was no reply. Two minutes later there were three brief radio transmissions of “mayday” from the aircraft, then silence, and the plane disappeared from the radar
Eyewitnesses in the 100 Mile House area heard a tremendous explosion and saw the plane split apart, the tail blowing away from the fuselage. Objects spilled out of the plane as it tilted, then nosed down, spinning out of control into the forest near Gustafson Lake, about 30 km to the west, where the wreckage ignited a substantial wildfire.
Police, forestry workers, and ambulances from 100 Mile House rushed to the scene but found no survivors. Bodies, pieces of bodies, personal effects, luggage, seats, and aircraft parts were strewn about the area. The fire burned all night but was extinguished the next day. Police and Department of Transport workers were able to enter the remains of the fuselage that afternoon, and they found 29 bodies, most still strapped into their seats.
It did not take long for investigators to determine that a bomb had caused the crash. Paint had been blasted into the skin of some of the passengers. An overnight bag belonging to one of the flight attendants, found 300 meters from the main wreckage, showed unmistakable signs of having been in an explosion. Further X-ray evidence turned up a piece of metal that came from a detonator. After reconstructing parts of the plane, federal crash investigators issued the official findings that the cause of the disaster was a massive explosion in the left rear lavatory.
The focus then turned to who would want to do such a thing. Naturally, there were all sorts of rumors -a strange man had been seen leaving the lavatory before take off in Vancouver; a flight attendant had smuggled explosives on board as a favour to her boyfriend and had stored them in the plane’s bathroom; a miner was in the lavatory preparing explosive charges to be used in his mining operation. As time passed, these rumours became more plentiful and more outlandish, but, of course, no evidence was ever found to substantiate any of them.
The RCMP carried out thorough psychological profiles and background checks on all of the passengers. From these investigations, four “persons of interest” were identified. The first was a 40-year-old man from Surrey who purchased $125,000 in life insurance just half an hour before boarding the plane. He had told his family that he was flying to Prince George to go to work at the pulp mill there, but there was no record of any such job offer.
Another passenger was experienced with explosives. He was 54 years of age and had been charged with and acquitted of murder seven years earlier. He was on his way to a new job, and no real motive for him to blow up the plane could be found.
A third 29-year-old man was flying up to Cassiar to take on a summer job. He was an avid gun enthusiast, and about three pounds of gun powder was missing from his personal inventory. However, once again, he too had no apparent motive to destroy the plane and himself along with it.
Finally, there was a Toronto man, an accountant who was employed by a firm that looked after the books of a major investment company. This company had collapsed just a month earlier. It was clearly a case of fraud, the worst in Canadian history to that date. Many investors had lost their life savings. However, no connection could be found to link this man with the explosion.
So, who placed the bomb on Flight 21, and why did they do it? To this day, the answers to these questions have never been determined. Much of the wreckage can still be found at the crash site, and as a memorial, tags with the names of the victims have been nailed to the trees at the site. A cairn with the names of all 52 passengers and crew can be seen in 100 Mile House behind the tourist centre. Both the crash site and the cairn commemorate the terrible loss of life in what is still one of Canada’s worst air disasters. It is very unlikely that this mass murder will ever be solved.
Information for this article came from newspaper accounts and from a book entitled “Dead Ends – B.C. Crime Stories” by Paul Willcocks.
