19 October 2012 marked the 28th anniversary of a fatal plane crash in Northern Alberta where a petty criminal emerged a hero.
27-year-old Paul Archambault was one of four people who survived the crash of a small, twin-prop commuter aircraft in a snow-covered forest west of the town of Slave Lake.
Six passengers didn’t make it, including politician Grant Notley, 45, leader of the Alberta New Democrats.
Paul Archambault was an itinerant labourer and drifter being escorted by a rookie RCMP officer to Grande Prairie to face a charge of malicious mischief. The man, as they say, was known to police. He’d spent time behind bars for stuff that was far more serious than mischief — including break-and-enter and theft over $5,000.
Scott Deschamps, the Mountie escorting Archambault from Kamloops, British Columbia, had a hunch he could trust his prisoner, and so for the short flight from Edmonton to Grande Prairie he removed Archambault’s handcuffs. It turned out to be a life-saving gesture.
Of the four survivors, Archambault was the least injured. The others who pulled through included Deschamps, pilot Erik Vogel and Larry Shaben, Alberta’s Housing Minister.
I was one of the first reporters to interview Paul Archambault and, turns out, one of the last. This post is about my dealings with the man over a 5-6 year period.
BOOK
The definitive story of Paul Archambault — and others involved in the crash — is in a newly-released book called Into The Abyss by Carol Shaben, Larry Shaben’s daughter.
The award-winning investigative journalist does a superb job of chronicling what occurred that fateful night, as well as what happened to the survivors in the months, years and decades that followed.
It’s quite a read. One reviewer writes, “… Shaben gives us an astonishing true story of catastrophe and redemption.” More on Carol’s book at the end of this post.
THE 1984 PLANE CRASH
Wapiti Aviation’s Piper Navajo Chieftan clipped a tall tree as the pilot tried to get in under heavy cloud for a landing in High Prairie. In darkness, the aircraft smashed into more trees, tearing its wings off. The fuselage flipped and slammed into the ground, ripping open like a sardine can and coming to rest upside down.
Archambault and his police escort were sitting at the back of the plane, where the luggage was stowed. Suitcases and stuff flew everywhere as the fuselage plowed into the deep snow and frozen earth like a missile, burying the Mountie. Deschamps was suffocating. Using his bare hands, Archambault dug frantically to get the officer some air.
After pulling Deschamps from the wreckage, the prisoner helped everyone make it through the long night until rescue workers rappelled from a military helicopter at first light next morning.
MY TIME WITH ARCHAMBAULT
I spent some time with Paul Archambault — initially during his first court appearance in Grande Prairie — after that, on the phone, at the inquiry that followed about half a year later, when I visited Grande Prairie … or when Paul came to Edmonton. I liked him. There was something ‘real’ and uncomplicated about Paul; no stick-handling [an ice hockey expression], no circling, no hidden agenda. The more I got to know him, he became less of a con and more of a decent human being.
While all this was going on, I was working for CBC Radio News in Edmonton. Just a sidebar here, I believe it was Harry Nuttall of CBC Television News who broke the story of the Notley crash, as it became known.
Within hours of learning of the crash, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation rented a small plane and flew myself, a TV reporter and cameraman to Slave Lake.
AN AIRPORT BECOMES A MEDIA CENTER
It was the start of winter and, as I recall, darn cold.
We reporters worked out of the small airport at Slave Lake. When I wasn’t fishing for information, I was on one of the pay phones inside the terminal, filing stories to CBC Radio in Edmonton and to CBC National News in Toronto.
Broadcaster Ted Barris hosted a special edition of CBC Radio’s Saturday Morning Show as we tried to keep on top of the breaking story. To get to the area, both print and electronic journalists were now packing their bags for flights, or speeding down the highway.
The Edmonton Journal did an excellent job covering the crash with insightful, on-site reporting by veteran Tom Barrett. The Journal hired an aircraft and flew over the crash site, snapping birds-eye-view photos that would soon be featured in the paper.
I was in the airport terminal and about to file another news update when two teenage girls rushed in through a side door, asking if their mother [Pat Blaskovits] had survived the crash. She hadn’t, but I couldn’t tell them that. We knew that only men had made it out alive. I advised the girls to check with the office at the end of a hallway. They sprinted in that direction. Even though the door was closed I could hear sobbing.
The girls weren’t in the office long. They suddenly bolted past me, crying, the older one covering her face with her hand. I watched the pair run to a car in the parking lot. That’s one image I cannot get out of my head.
Cam Ford, Senior Editor of CBC Radio News in Edmonton, made an ‘executive decision’ to release the name of one of those killed in the crash: NDP Leader Grant Notley, prompting howls of protests from our brass in Toronto. That’s because Notley’s family had not been officially notified of his death — even though his passing was the talk of party insiders, which is how the media first heard about it.
Cam and I talked about this on the phone, wondering if we should go with it. He asked, “What do you think?”, reminding me that Grant was a very well-known public figure. I said, “Go with the story before we’re scooped.” The breaking news that Grant Notley was dead prompted the RCMP to set up a roadblock on a northern Alberta highway to intercept a car being driven by Grant’s wife, Sandy. “Don’t listen to the radio,” an officer told the woman when she rolled down her window. At that point, Sandy said she knew her husband had died.
I’d only met Grant a few times, but he struck me as a decent man — one who pushed humanity in the right direction. He wasn’t just a well-known Albertan, but a great Albertan.
FIRST MEETING WITH THE PRISONER
For days, the deadly plane crash was lead news story in Canada. The attention shifted from six dead to one survivor in particular — the man sporting a blue jean jacket and handcuffs — especially after Larry Shaben labelled him a hero. We had his name — Paul Archambault — but no interview. Who was this fellow?
My first chat with the prisoner came just minutes before his court appearance in Grande Prairie, a few days after the crash.
About an hour before Archambault stood before a judge, I dropped around to the RCMP station nearby where a senior Mountie revealed he had recommended to the Crown — in view of what Archambault did to save his officer’s life — that charges against him be dropped. He asked that I not do a story on it until it was “official.” I said, fine with me.
I walked into the courtroom. To my left sat a group of reporters on a bench, like birds on a wire … and so I went to the right. I was alone, but not for long. A young, anxious man with shoulder-length hair and a jean jacket plunked himself down beside me, to my left. I took one look at the guy and instantly knew who he was. I said, “You’re Archambault, aren’t you?” He glanced my way and said, “Yes … who are you?” I gave him my name and told him where I worked. We shook hands and I slipped him my business card.
I asked Paul to call me collect whenever he could. Over the years he did just that.
We had only minutes to talk before things got rolling in court, so I fired off some questions. I wanted to know if he was considering a lawsuit because of the crash. Archambault’s response said a lot about him. “No,” he replied, “I just want my blue jeans back.”
I whispered that charges against him would likely be thrown out. He smiled.
The charges were indeed dropped. Mr. Archambault was now a free man.
A group of reporters, myself included, gathered around Archambault outside the Courthouse and did a [formal] interview. I can’t remember much of what was talked about, but for some reason I vividly recall that local reporters let the out-of-towners [the “Big City” reporters, if you will] ask the first questions. Perhaps it was more a case of intimidation than politeness, not sure.
Archambault later revealed he was off to British Columbia to attend some sort of self-improvement course paid for by his uncle Denis, a criminal defence lawyer in Prince George, B.C. I briefly spoke with Denis on the phone; he struck me as a caring person.
From time to time Paul phoned with updates on how well he was doing, or not doing. He again settled in Grande Prairie, working at a small family restaurant downtown. His girlfriend, Sue Wink, worked as a waitress at the same restaurant.
ARCHAMBAULT’S RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PLANE CRASH
The accident haunted Paul; I could tell because he didn’t talk about it until I raised the subject. I wanted to know what happened that night, how he and the others made it through the ordeal, their fears, gains, setbacks, what they talked about over a fire, all that stuff.
Once Paul got talking, he couldn’t stop. He described burning luggage, branches and twigs to keep warm … and that the policeman — in severe pain from numerous broken ribs — complained it was either too hot or too cold. The prisoner kept moving the officer to keep him content. Paul said he kiddingly nicknamed the cop “whiner.” Larry Shaben — nearly blind because his glasses had been shattered in the crash — got tagged “Mr. Magoo,” after the poor-sighted TV cartoon character.
They were four unlikely characters trying to survive in the middle of nowhere.
From the pilot, Paul said he got instructions on where the emergency locator transmitter was located [at the back of the aircraft]. Throughout the night, the prisoner kept turning the beacon off and on. Circling overhead, rescue planes picked up the intermittent signal. They knew that at least one person had survived the crash.
The more Paul talked about his night in the bush, the horror stories slipped out, like whispered secrets in a bar. In darkness, he repeatedly returned to the fuselage to comfort a passenger still trapped in the wreckage. The man was hanging upside down. Paul said he could not pry him free because he was wedged in too tight, so he gave him words of encouragement. Unable to speak, the badly injured passenger simply responded by moaning.
Paul said it bothered him to hear the man in pain and banging on the plane with his arm. At some point in the night all was quiet in the fuselage and the number of dead rose from five to six.
The prisoner recounted that some time after the man died, he returned to the aircraft, while it was still dark, to have a look at the man he’d been comforting. He flicked on his lighter, half expecting an explosion … but there was none. But what Paul saw so frightened him that he immediately shut off his lighter and left. The man, he said, had no face.
According to Paul, another victim appeared to be peacefully sleeping in his seat, still belted in, with no apparent injuries, save for a trickle of blood on a small ball of ice that had formed on his lips.
Sitting around the campfire, Shaben turned to Paul and said that some “important people” had been on the plane. Before the crash, Paul hadn’t heard of Grant Notley — nor Larry Shaben. Paul once told me, “Larry’s some kind of big wheel in the Government.” He was in fact a provincial cabinet minister.
Shaben asked what others would wish for if he could have anything he wanted. The policeman said he wanted to be with his wife; Shaben wanted a hot bath. The prisoner wanted a joint.
Rescue came at daylight when men with the Canadian Air Force rappelled from a helicopter.
Years after the accident, Paul shared that he wanted to return to the crash site and spend a night there. He asked if I’d go with him. I said sure, but it never happened; life and other stories got in the way. I now regret that, getting out there with Paul with a tape recorder, etc …
THE HEARING
I again ran into Paul in early 1985 at a government [Canadian Aviation Safety Board] inquiry in Grande Prairie into Wapiti Flight 402. Next to pilot Erik Vogel, Paul was one of the key witnesses, at least in terms of media attention.
During a break in the hearing, held in a hotel on the western edge of town, a reporter freelancing for an aviation magazine came up with the idea to photograph all four survivors. Cameras flashed away.
MORE INSIGHT INTO ARCHAMBAULT
I’d booked a room at the same hotel. One evening there was a knock at my door; I opened it to see Paul and Sue standing there, with Paul in an upbeat mood, bopping from side to side. I invited them in. Paul bounced up and down on my waterbed like a kid on a trampoline, with him suggesting something to Sue [use your imagination what that was about]. The voices and giggling made it difficult to record my news reports. I had to ask for quiet.
After the reports were filed, we drove into town where Paul proudly showed me his carpentry work in the basement of the restaurant where he worked. He’d built some wooden stairs. The workmanship wasn’t professional but when Paul asked me about it, I said it was good … and they were lucky to have a worker like him. He grinned from ear to ear.
Paul liked the restaurant owners because they trusted him, pointing out that one night they let him deposit the day’s receipts in the bank.
Paul Archambault reminded me of the 1960s country song Branded Man by Merle Haggard where a former prisoner is haunted by his past.
Sue offered this interesting insight: Paul had become a bit of a ‘celebrity’ in Grande Prairie, but those now wanting to hang out with him were the same people who had shunned him before the accident.
Paul, meanwhile, didn’t seem to know what to make of all the attention. He kept saying, “I’m no hero.”
Paul Archambault and Sue Wink
[Photo taken in Grande Prairie by blog author in 1985]
Because of that, Paul walked with a limp. We were chucking a frisbee in a park in Grande Prairie and I noticed he couldn’t run very well. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. He then talked about the time he crashed a stolen car.
NOT MEASURING UP
In a telephone interview from Alymer, Quebec, near Ottawa, Paul’s mother, Gayle, confided that Paul could never “measure up” to his father, a great athlete, and it nagged at her son. She said Paul consistently tried to be accepted by his father, but whatever he did was never good enough. I was reminded of the adage that it’s easier to raise a child than it is to repair an adult.
When the inquiry wrapped up, St. John Ambulance presented Paul with a framed certificate for his part in helping people on the night of the crash. Paul tucked the award under his arm and walked out of the second floor conference room towards an open area, near some large windows. From a distance I watched as the former prisoner studied the certificate, as though it was written in a language he couldn’t understand.
I then approached with what I thought was an easy question with an obvious answer. “You’re going to put this up on your wall, right?” Paul turned and said, “No, I’m going to mail it to my father. Maybe now he’ll be proud of me …”
Years later when I relayed that conversation to Paul’s mother she gasped, “oh no …” and began to cry.
FRONT PAGE CHALLENGE
In May 1985, Paul Archambault was a guest on CBC’s Front Page Challenge, a TV series that ran from 1957 to 1966 where journalists tried to guess the news story associated with a mystery guest.
The thing that most impressed Paul was that Mother Corp rented a new car for him, then put him up in a nice hotel. The drifter and petty criminal was treated like a real human being. Paul beamed when he relayed the story.
I sensed Paul wasn’t after glory or fame, just acceptance.
DINNER OUT IN EDMONTON
Paul phoned when he got to Edmonton — though usually without much warning — [“hey, I’m at the bus station ... wanna get together?”]
We had several meals together. I once bought him dinner at a family restaurant on Stony Plain Road, just west of 156th Street. Paul Archambault was the first prisoner I really got to know and he forever changed the way I saw criminals. I saw some good in him, a man longing to prove his worth, if you will.
Perhaps he was simply trying to find himself, but who isn’t? And aren’t we all seeking approval from our parents?
When I drive by that restaurant I think of Paul, the way he sat at the table, nervously straightening his cutlery, looking up. He felt uncomfortable but I could tell he enjoyed the contact. For me, Paul didn’t have to measure up; he’d already done that one freezing night in a Northern Alberta forest with four lives on the line.
Another time I had him out to our house in Spruce Grove, just west of Edmonton, where my wife Hardis made him a meal. The kids liked him.
According to a 27 May 1991 Matthew Ingram story in Alberta Report, Paul Archambault moved back East after the crash but couldn’t stay out of trouble. He returned to Grande Prairie where he worked for Diamond Caterers. His boss, Bill Taschuk, was quoted as saying, “He seemed to be kind of a loner. He’d do his job, collect his pay and off he’d go.” Taschuk never knew that his employee was the hero of the Notley plane crash.
If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that there’s greatness in all of us.
Paul swore now and then, but it didn’t bother me because I swore too. After all, I worked in a newsroom where it happened all the time.
Paul wasn’t sophisticated or moneyed-up; but neither was he like some Alberta politicians who voted in favour of retroactive legislation to put the screws to some poor Natives fighting a “land claim” with a government that held all the cards. In other words, Paul wasn’t a whore for the status quo … and unlike some journalists, he didn’t show up for work holding a jar of vaseline.
DEAD AT 33
Paul Archambault was last seen on a bitterly cold night, November 8, 1990, leaving the Salvation Army hostel in Grande Prairie. Next spring, when the snow melted, railway workers came across his body in a watery ditch.
Police believe the prisoner-turned-hero froze to death, his body covered by drifting snow. The man who had been the centre of so much media attention died alone, his remains unnoticed for half a year. His family wasn’t particularly worried he might be missing since Paul sometimes didn’t check in with them for months.
I called Gayle Archambault soon after her son’s body was discovered. After she stopped crying she revealed she had few of her son’s possessions, that the RCMP hadn’t sent anything Paul had on him when his body was found. I put in a call to Constable Ian Sanderson at the Grande Prairie Detachment. The officer said, “well, we have his wallet …” I said something like, “Well, here’s his mother’s address …” Sanderson mailed Paul’s wallet to his mother. Gayle phoned all excited the day it arrived.
A year or so later, I bumped into Sanderson at the Courthouse in Edmonton. By this time he had been promoted and transferred to the RCMP detachment in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Sanderson was as I had imagined him to be: distinguished and someone who looked you straight in the eye, a peace officer the public would respect.
Larry Shaben died from cancer in 2008. Paul Archambault’s parents are also deceased.
Paul’s cemetery plot is back East. The last time I spoke with Gayle, in the early 90s, she said her son’s grave was in a “nice spot.” I’ve never been around to see Paul’s final resting place, another regret.
INTO THE ABYSS
You can find out more about Carol Shaben’s book, Into The Abyss [“How A Deadly Plane Crash Changed The Lives Of A Pilot, A Politician, A Criminal And A Cop’] by going to this site: www.carolshaben.com
Into The Abyss is published by Random House of Canada. Various bookstores are selling it for $29.95; Costco for $17.89. The ebook version is $15.99. Prices in Canadian $.
BBC Radio 4, in its coverage of Into The Abyss — its “Book of the Week” — featured a photo from another province — British Columbia [Mt. Robson in the Canadian Rockies] — more than 500 kilometres from the crash site. Close enough I guess.
Into The Abyss
Note: the black and white photo of Paul Archambault is courtesy of Alberta Report.
