Swissair 111

September 1998

I cannot sleep for thought of them.

They are still out there tonight, ornaments in the cold Atlantic. I imagine that I felt the rush of their released souls, I imagine I heard their prayers and cries echoing off the granite face of Nova Scotia.

Peggy's Cove was still last night, before that burning rush of souls.  And in the first hopeful hours after they passed, it was the fishers who shook off sleep and, unasked, took their boats and ropes and thermoses of coffee out into the silent black. They cast their nets for life, and found none. By dawn, beaten down by defeat, they were heard calling for help from the Navy to take the terrible catch from their decks.

By morning, as a weak sun fought with coastal fog, the Cove had been taken.  Room was politely made for the teams of military, the boards of investigators, and--- everywhere--- the media with vans and trucks, wires and satellite dishes. They've done no better than the fishers.

No life has been found, and precious few shells have been pried from the fist of the North Atlantic. The garb by which their souls were known lies out there on the floor of sand, in the steel-cold water. Sons and brothers. Diplomats. Mothers and infants. Two famous doctors. Wives and daughters and husbands. The air is thick with shock and misery; the Cove is quiet and drawn into itself.

The silence muffles the deep thrum of Navy cruiser engines, the sharp whine of helicopters, the cacophony of reporters who have suddenly landed here from everywhere, all of them speaking at once, microphones held close to their lips, hands cupped around ears to keep away the determined, breath-stealing wind.

Those who live in this village do what they can, and the homes of the fishers stay open to those who still search. Wives and children and friends carry hot coffee and thick sandwiches to the searchers.  Peggy's Cove is a small place: 60 people in one fishing village in the string-of-pearls that decorates the throat of the South Shore of Nova Scotia. The coast is sere and dangerous; death is not unknown here. People---tourists, people "from away" --- have been blown off the rocky heights and flung into the sea by the kind of wind that turns granite to sand. One or two people in a season.

Not two hundred and twenty-nine. Not on a calm, temperate night in a place of such beauty. Death on this scale is not known here; I toss and turn with it, and I cannot sleep.

I think about what is yet to come--- the full measure of pain unfolds slowly, rippling through the insulation of shock. The families will come here. The families. They will be taken to Shearwater, of course--- the military base at which a morgue has been set up. But they will want to come here, too, to the Cove. To see. Buses will bring them, or military cars, or vans supplied by the city. They will stand here, they will lean against the slender white finger of the lighthouse and stare out into a pewter September sea that is flat as a blade, icy, indifferent. They will rail and weep; they will stare, not comprehending; they will toss roses and prayer beads into the irritable surf; they will stand, stony and silent as the granite beneath their feet; they will pull at their hair and crumple to the sand, inconsolable and devastated, shaking with the terrible cold of loss and grief.

Someone will draw the comparison. Someone, finally, will say that once again victims of the north Atlantic have found final harbour in Halifax. But there won't be a section of the old city cemetery marked "Swissair" next to the section marked "Titanic." This time, everyone or no one will be claimed; everyone or no one will go home.

And when they have all left, and when those who came to claim them have left, and the Navy, and the investigators, and the media have left, in days or weeks from now, the Atlantic will heave and sigh and settle back into herself. The light atop the slender spire at Peggy's Cove will sweep and flash, the boats will gather at dawn and nose out into the thinning fields of crab and haddock and lobster and hake. By then it will be too late for tourists, or for the macabre among us who would come, inevitably, to search for a doll, or a wallet, or worse. The Cove will be still again, will begin to heal in its own way. In silence.  

Postscript: In fact only one body was recovered intact, and the remains of the victims of the crash were buried, with the consent of their loved ones, at two memorial sites near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia. The primary memorial site was dedicated, with the families in attendance, in September of 1999.