National Post (National Edition)
DISTANCE AND TIME WARPS OUR SENSES ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE LOSS OF FLIGHT PS752.
AVIATION DISASTER SOON OVERSHADOWED BY COVID
Some news breaks fast and hard. A jolt of adrenalin 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 today, 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 effect 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.
It seemed near impossible in the aftermath of Flight PS752's destruction, as the bodies were gathered in the scorched field outside Tehran, and weeping relatives held photos of their lost family, that it wouldn't be the biggest calamity for Canadians by year's end.
But here we are.
Imagine, 2020 became a year when Flight PS752 isn't the biggest tragedy, for most of us.
Time and distance play their game on COVID-19, as well, of course.
News of a new, deadly contagion also seemed a faraway story when we first learned of it, also a year ago.
Wuhan, China, was a city many, likely most Canadians, had never heard of when the first victims fell.
Like with the early reports on Flight PS752, for Canada, it seemed a foreign oddity, a distant concern. As COVID-19 crept closer to Canada, it became more real, more alarming and directly deadly.
The pandemic allows neither the restorative of time nor the prophylaxis of distance. It remains right here, right now.
Writing obituaries on the passengers who died on Flight PS752 was a grim task. So much sorrow. Such needless pain.
The passenger manifest was achingly long, the impact of death so obvious and heartbreaking.
Despite that immense tragedy, though, the death toll was finite.
During COVID-19, the officially tabulated death toll stands at more than 16,500 in Canada; too many obituaries to write.
For families of the victims of Flight PS752, the crash and its trauma remain oppressively huge. Their need for support and compassion remains.
Distance still mutates the outcome. Many still fight for the return of their relative's belongings from Iran, including missing valuables and sentimental items.
They fight for compensation. They search for answers, accountability and justice in a land far from Canada, even if it was once their home, with access restricted even more by COVID-19.
Not only is travel constrained, but vigils to mark the tragedy on its first anniversary — to gather in large numbers for public remembrance, comfort or protest — are impossible for most.
It's that damned pandemic again.
Just before Christmas, Canada designated Jan. 8 as an annual National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters. Maybe communities across the country can close their distance and remember them together, next time.