Nipigon fire victim remembered
Brook named for sailor killed in October 1965 fire on ship
AMHERST — Roderick Reade was only 21 years old when a fire onboard the HMCS Nipigon took his life and two other crewmen in 1965.
Now his name is memorialized on the brook outside Amherst where he spent much of his childhood fishing with his siblings and friends. The Roderick Reade Brook flows under Pumping Station Road in Brookdale, close to where the family of 11 grew up more than 50 years ago.
“It’s the most perfect place to honour him,” brother Alex Reade said following a commemoration ceremony Wednesday that was hosted by Branch 10 of the Royal Canadian Legion and attended by family members and a couple of crewmen from the ship. “We used to fish back there. We spent 90 per cent of our time on that brook, or on the Milner farm or the Ripley farm. We had a lot of fun back there when we were young.”
Able Seaman Roderick Reade was severely burned and later died when fire broke out on the Nipigon in the Bay of Biscay at 8:25 p.m. on Oct.18, 1965. No official cause was ever determined for the explosion or subsequent fire, but it’s believed a leak in one of the fuel tanks of the on-board helicopter was the most likely cause.
For sister Sandra Boudreau, the ceremony was something the family has been waiting for.
“We’re very appreciative of this,” Boudreau said. “He was just a young kid when this happened. He used to come to my place with his uniform. He was very proud of his service.”
Boudreau said it hurt so bad when he was killed, but it was also painful to learn about her brother’s death on the radio instead of through official circles.
“Nobody got in touch with me. They said he lived in Guelph. My parents had just moved to Guelph, but he had never lived there. He lived in Amherst his entire life,” Boudreau said. “Yet, Amherst never acknowledged it. That’s why this is so nice. You can tell from the whole family being here that it’s something that’s very important to us. We needed it.”
David Yeo served with Reade on the Nipigon and said he was one of his closest friends on the ship. He still remembers the fire vividly and loading his friend onto the helicopter to ship him to the nearby HMCS Bonaventure.
“I helped carry the stretcher to get him to the helicopter. I knew he was in a lot of pain and he was juiced up on morphine, but he gave me this look that said, ‘it’s going to be OK.’ That’s the last I saw of him,” said Yeo, who attended the ceremony along with another crew member, Charles Caterer. “I remember I started shaking and trembling. It was a normal reaction to an abnormal event.”
Yeo said the hardest part was having to take Rod’s girlfriend to where he was injured when the ship returned to Halifax following the incident.
“She wanted to see where it all happened. I objected to do it but I was told I had to take her,” said Yeo, who lives in Charlottetown. “It was probably the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.”
Yeo said the seas were very stormy that night. He thinks something shifted sparking the fuel tank. If the explosion had been 30 seconds earlier, he thinks he would’ve been killed or severely injured.
“It blew the hatch, the pressure picked me up and threw me against the bulkhead,” said Yeo, who was 19 at the time. “There was a ball of fire and a lot of smoke. You responded to your training and did what you were taught to do.”
Caterer, who lives in Enfield, said he was on watch on the officers’ deck. He said he heard a loud "poof" and turned to the sonar shack and asked what they were doing.
“They said it’s not us. Next thing there was smoke everywhere,” Caterer said.
Both Yeo and Caterer said it’s fitting for Reade to be honoured because no one in the community today would know who he was and what happened to him. They both consider him a hero for his service to Canada.
Reade is buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, U.K. It was in the 1970s when the Canadian government determined that Canadian service people killed overseas would be repatriated to Canada when possible.
Lorne Baird, president of the Amherst legion, said the effort to honour Reade began in 2019 when the Municipality of Cumberland voted to rename the brook, but the ceremony was delayed due to COVID restrictions.
“I’m a veteran of a fire at sea. We lost nine on my ship and 54 more in hospital, so I know what it’s about when you have a fire at sea. You can’t call the fire department, you either fight it or die,” said Baird, who was a crew member on the HMCS Kootenay on Oct. 23, 1959 when the starboard gearbox caught fire and exploded 200 kilometres off Plymouth, U.K.
Baird said Wednesday’s ceremony provided closure for the family.
“Now it’s official and they can say they have a place that’s theirs,” he said.