Remembering one of the deadliest plane crashes in Canadian history
On December 9, 1956. at 6:10 pm, CFL rookie Cal Jones boarded a Canadian North Star plane at the Vancouver International Airport. He had just played in his first CFL All-Star Game after signing with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Originally drafted by the Detroit Lions earlier in the year, he refused to play for the team when he found out Black players were paid less than white players. Instead, he signed with the Blue Bombers.
He was a huge get for the team. Jones had finished 10th in Heisman Trophy voting in the United States in 1955, and was the first college football player, and first African-American, to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Originally, Jones was scheduled to take a morning flight from Vancouver to Winnipeg, with a stopover in Calgary. After he overslept, he instead boarded Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810 that evening.
On the flight with him were 58 other passengers, including four other CFL players who had played in the All-Star Game: Melvin Becket, Mario DeMarco, Gordon Sturtridge, and Ray Syrnyk. All four played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Four other players, including future CFL Hall of Famer and lieutenant governor of Alberta Norman Kwong, were supposed to be on the flight but did not catch the plane in time.
At the helm of the plane was Allan Clarke, a former bomber commander, and two other crew members.
No one on that flight would make it to their destination.
For the first 45 minutes of the flight, it was a routine trip as the plane slowly climbed to its cruising altitude.
Everything seemed fine until 6:55 pm when the inner port engine reported a fire. Clarke shut down the engine as a precaution.
Crash debris on Slesse Mountain in 2009/Wikicommons (Joehall)
He radioed to Vancouver Air Traffic Control, stating there appeared to be a fire in the inner port engine. He requested a return flight to the airport on Airway Green 1. This flight path was generally used if an aircraft was losing altitude because it had more favourable terrain.
This was approved, but for reasons that remain unknown, Clarke made a right turn with the aircraft rather than a left. As a result, he was heading west-southwest of Green 1.
Unbeknownst to him, the plane was directly in the path of the mountains along the Canada-USA border.
At 7:10 pm, Clarke radioed as the plane passed Hope, asking for clearance as he was having trouble maintaining the altitude of the plane. He requested to bring the plane down to 2,400 metres.
This was the last time anyone ever heard from Clarke.
In the United States, a radar station at Birch Bay, Washington, tracked the plane as it was heading back to Vancouver.
At 7:11 pm, the plane disappeared from radar near Slesse Mountain, a 2,400-metre-high mountain.
It was not known at the time, but the aircraft had crashed directly into the mountain.
Everyone on board was killed, making it the deadliest air crash in Canadian history to that point.
It was not until May 12, 1957, that the wreckage was found by a group of mountaineers climbing Slesse Mountain.
Due to the remote location of the crash, very little information was recovered about what happened to the plane and why Clarke had turned right instead of left.
During the coroner’s inquiry at the crash site, several body parts were buried in two common graves on the mountain.
In the official report, it was stated the crash may have been caused by a combination of factors. A theorized main factor was icing on the wings and the fuselage, which may have caused the loss of the second engine. Despite the report’s conclusions, no definite cause was ever found.
The memorial in Chilliwack (Jonhall/Wikicommons)
The aircraft and those who were killed on that day remain on Slesse Mountain, while a memorial to the passengers and crew of Flight 810-9 is located in Chilliwack.
Among the CFL players, all four members of the Saskatchewan Roughriders who were on the flight had their numbers retired by the team.
The DeMarco-Becket Memorial Trophy was created in 1957 and given to the most outstanding lineman in the CFL’s West Division.
In 1989, Jones was chosen by University of Iowa fans as one of the greatest players in the school’s history. His number has also been retired by the school. In 1980, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
The grandson of Cal Jones, Edwin Harrison, played for the Calgary Stampeders from 2010 to 2015, winning two Grey Cups. In 2012, he embarked on a search to learn more about his grandfather. This was turned into a TSN documentary, The Crash of Flight 810.
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