MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!
shrieked the voice of
the pilot,
his words
piercing through
air traffic control
communications
emanating
from distant speakers.

“Good God! the plane’s off the radar screen.
It must have gone down!”

CP AIR FLIGHT 21- JULY 8, 1965
is inscribed in stone
at the memorial cairn
in 100 Mile House
where scores of
rescue workers
fire fighters
journalists and
law enforcement

experts
followed the logging roads
and old bush trails

to the crash site
more than half a century ago.

“Bodies falling
from the tree-tops…”

It’s etched in the old man’s
memory from when he helped
search for survivors.

The plane had burst into pieces
from 15 thousand feet
slamming into the forest
bodies of fifty-two passengers
and crew
scattered amongst
trees, brush and debris.

“Three days to find them all!”

Residue from a bomb
detonated on the floor
of a lavatory.
No accident
but a deliberate act
of murder.
Impossible to determine
the culprit who’d
wreaked such havoc.

Victims from small northern
communities
such as Burns Lake,
Fraser Lake and Chetwynd
and from as far away
as Winnipeg.

Four possible suspects
whose loved ones
learned
their dead relative may have been
a murderer.

Was it the gambler?
The explosives expert?
The loner who liked guns?
Or the angry young man with a pistol
in his pack?

We may never know.