Alchemy of time and distance warps senses of first anniversary of Flight PS752
Some news breaks fast and hard. A jolt of adrenaline smacking eyewitnesses before crashing through social media, into news bulletins and live TV, seizing attention as people scramble for more and more information.
Often, though, the true impact of what’s happening, even something huge, comes more slowly, with a dawning realization of personal impact; like knowing there’s a big car crash, then noticing a family member is late returning home, or hearing of a shooting then learning it’s where family work.
The alchemy of distance does a remarkable thing to news.
One year ago Friday, when an airliner took off from the Iranian capital of Tehran destined for Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, it would be hard to conceive how much that plane meant to Canada.
It is a quirk of immigration and airline routing that this passenger jet, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, was filled with Canadians and those living in Canada and those loved by Canadians.
The crashing of any passenger jet is alarming and tragic, exponentially so when it is shot from the sky, but there was a slow dawning of the large, direct impact for Canada and how it would tear at our emotions.
Soon after the plane plunged back to earth after takeoff on Jan. 8, 2020, as friends and family of travellers looked for information and journalists started documenting what happened, Canadian connections soon popped up. The crash came at night, Eastern time.
By morning, names and faces of victims were emerging: from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Calgary. The trickle became a flood: Victoria, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Windsor, Halifax, London, Ajax, Waterloo, Kingston, Guelph and more.
By day’s end, it was clear: almost all of the 167 passengers were heading to Canada; 138 of them, including 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents of Canada and 53 others, many of them studying here, according to the government’s most recent tally.
As the ache of loss turned to anger over its cause — the jet was brought down by two surface-to-air missiles fired by Iran’s military, Iranian officials finally admitted — the story blossomed into one of a frustrating coverup, of international intrigue and strained foreign relations, and a search for answers and justice.
It was an enormous news story everywhere, but particularly in Canada.
In those early days of 2020, it looked to be the biggest story of the year. It’s hard — these days — to believe this was only a year ago.
There’s another element of alchemy that does strange things to news: time.
While the loss for the families of the victims from Flight PS752 remains as strong and awful as ever, the narrowing distance that brought the tragedy home to Canada is countered by the widening impact of time.
Time heals all wounds, the aphorism says, but the passing year hasn’t offered that kind of time, the nurturing, replenishing kind.
It hasn’t been a time of reflection and healing, but a time of more wounds and more affliction, heaped and then heaped again with the knowledge the worst may yet still come.
Time exposed us to a different kind of horror.
Time, in a year of pandemic, saw our attention and shared public grief devoured, the news overwhelmed, fear recalibrated. Time pushed the loss of life further across Canada and deeper into the daily lives of even more Canadians.