National Post (National Edition)
SPECIAL RAMP CEREMONY WEDNESDAY TO HONOUR THE SIX DEAD ARMED FORCES MEMBERS.
Six who died will be honoured at CFB Trenton
OTTAWA • The Canadian Armed Forces is planning to hold a ramp ceremony Wednesday to honour the six service members who went down with a military helicopter that crashed off the coast of Greece, even though the remains of five have not been recovered and identified.
The ceremony will be held at Canadian Forces Base Trenton in Ontario and include the friends and family of all six who were aboard the Cyclone helicopter when it crashed into the Ionian Sea during a training accident on April 29.
It will coincide with the repatriation of Sub-Lt. Abbigail Cowbrough’s remains, which were recovered and will be transported from Trenton to Toronto along the “Highway of Heroes” for a coroner’s examination.
The other five will be represented by different military headgear, depending on whether they were members of the Royal Canadian Navy or Royal Canadian Air Force.
The headgear will be resting on pillows to be carried off the plane by fellow military members.
Those missing and presumed dead are Capt. Brenden Ian MacDonald of New Glasgow, N.S.; Capt. Kevin Hagen of Nanaimo, B.C.; Capt. Maxime Miron-Morin of Trois-Rivieres, Que.; SubLt. Matthew Pyke of Truro, N.S.; and Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins of Guelph, Ont.
The decision to use pillows and headgear during the ramp ceremony follows deliberations at the highest levels of the Armed Forces over how to honour the five without having recovered their remains — a situation that is unprecedented in recent Canadian history. (Late last week the military reported it had found remains from another victim of the crash but had not identified them.)
Canada only started repatriating the remains of fallen military personnel in 1970. Even then, said Michael Boire, a historian at the Royal Military College of Canada, those few who died on peacekeeping missions and other overseas duties were returned at night to avoid public attention.
The modern version of the ramp ceremony — held during the day with the families and media in attendance as flag-draped caskets are taken out of a plane and loaded into hearses for the trip down the Highway of Heroes — started during the early years of the war in Afghanistan.
The remains of all those killed since that time have been recovered until now.
While that sets up a completely different ramp ceremony on Wednesday, Boire believed the fact the remains of the five missing presumed dead haven’t been recovered adds even more importance to what is already a sombre and highly emotional event.
“It’s a wonderful expression to the families,” said Boire. “Even more so because they’re gone.”
The Cyclone helicopter was deployed with the Halifax-class frigate HMCS Fredericton to Europe in January, where they had been attached to a NATO maritime force tasked with patrolling the Mediterranean and Black seas.
Cyclones are primarily based on naval vessels and used for hunting submarines, surveillance and search and rescue.
They entered operational service — replacing the military’s ancient Sea Kings — in 2018 after more than a decade of developmental challenges.
The helicopter that crashed last week was codenamed “Stalker” and took off around 4:35 p.m. local time as part of a training exercise involving the Fredericton as well as Italian and Turkish warships, according to chief of defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance.
The helicopter was returning to the Fredericton when the ship lost contact with it at 6:52 p.m. The aircraft’s flight and voice recorders broke away from the helicopter automatically when it hit the surface and have been recovered, but the main fuselage remains deep in the water.
A flight investigation team of military personnel and a representative from Sikorsky Aircraft, which builds the Cyclone, has been in the area since the weekend conducting interviews and trying to determine the cause of the crash.