Tuesday, August 4, 2009

::: The Eerie, and Flight 621 .::.

You know that feelin'.

A chill down the spine.

You are alone BUT don't feel alone. A presence. Unsure what?

Strangely, it just happens sometimes when I'm doing 621 research. At home, or out in the field.

Anyways…

Rest assured… that every man-made idol humanity places his trust in, will be, thrown to the ground.

With Air Canada Flight 621, a Douglas DC-8, quite literally—

IMAGINE MY surprise, no shock! when I discovered this, last year.

A Douglas Aircraft Company (of California) ad, from the throwaway year of 1960. Proudly, and whimsically advertising their first jet airliner, the DC-8.

Raw power, folks! Fast, quiet, comfortable, dependable, and safe. Yes, safe. Rest assured, the moment you step aboard a DC-8 and enter the sky… you WILL have peace of mind.

Now, that was the hype.

The reality?

A little different with Flight 621, and many other DC-8 flights folks…

Back in the day there were "issues" with various mechanical aspects of the DC-8. A lot of incidents, accidents, and crashes were becoming the back-down-to-earth reality of this Douglas aircraft.

The Government of Canada even kept secret files on the DC-8 which can still be found in the national archives.

Through TCA and later Air Canada, which were both crown corporations, the Canadian federal government owned lots of DC-8s.

A whopping forty-four in total! Almost 10% of the entire McDonnell-Douglas production run, from 1958 through to 1972 was owned by Canadians, collectively.

And Big Brother, or the Government of Canada would later block the attempted purchase of McDonnell-Douglas DC-10s by Air Canada. The mounting evidence in the secret "8" files was a little too sobering. The "Feds" HAD had enough with Douglas, even though the DC-10's wings were made right in Toronto, right at the former Avro Canada plant!

Now, back to the ad.

Damn, it's eerie.

The ad shows an innocent blond-haired girl carrying a doll, and waving good-bye (to trusting parents).

The COLOURIZED INSET Jac Holland photo shows a similar doll found in the crash debris of Flight 621. Ironically, not even ten feet from the untouched doll was a lifeless, little, preteen blond-haired girl… amid tonnes, and tonnes, of burnt aircraft wreckage.

Age? About ten years old, I was told.

The former OPP police officer who returned with me to the crash site told me that he remembers her well. Too well.

She lay there in silence as he sadly looked down at her. Her blond hair, gently responding to a breeze, making its' way through the field.

Fifty-five minutes previous, she too, had waved good-bye.

Nobody knew it would be her last such wave.

And now, her family, would be left picking up the pieces of their personal tragedy for the rest of their lives.

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