HELICOPTER CRASH

Three were from Nova Scotia. The rest hail from all across the country, but if you are crew aboard a navy ship based in Halifax, you’re no come from away.

You’re Nova Scotian.

Sub-lt. Abbigail Cowbrough demonstrated that last week when she posted a video to Facebook of her playing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes aboard the frigate HMCS Fredericton, where it was docked in Crete during a NATO mission.

You can’t get much more Nova Scotia than that.

“You can travel the world and still never meet anyone like an East Coaster. Glad to have been taken in by them, for I’d have it no other way,” she said in her post.

Cowbrough, 23, was originally from Toronto, where she spent her childhood. She was a member of Regal Heights Baptist Church in Dartmouth.

Cowbrough was one of six aboard the CH148 Cyclone helicopter that crashed Wednesday into the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. All six were lost, adding another heartbreaking tragedy to the sad list this spring in our province.

The helicopter was stationed aboard the Fredericton and based at 12 Wing Shearwater.

The pilots were Capt. Brenden Ian Macdonald, of New Glasgow, a natural pilot, according to one of his instructors, and Capt. Kevin Hagen of Nanaimo, B.C.

Sub-lieut. Matthew Pyke, from Truro, was a naval weapons officer, an “all-round great guy” who volunteered at local fire departments before joining the navy, a relative told The Chronicle Herald.

Capt. Maxime Miron-morin was an air combat systems officer from Trois-rivieres, Que., and Master Cpl. Matthew Cousins, from Guelph, Ont., operated the chopper’s airborne electronic sensors.

So now six more families are forced into the limbo of mourning during the COVID-19 crisis, where families cannot gather across distance, cannot share hugs, swap stories or find comfort in a church service.

There’s hardly a family in the province that doesn’t have a navy connection. The navy is deeply embedded in how we see ourselves as Nova Scotians and Haligonians, and that’s one of the reasons thousands of naval veterans from other parts of the country choose to settle here when their careers are over. That’s why this tragedy is felt so keenly across the province.

It’s said that bad news comes in threes. It’s been almost too much to bear this spring, from a viral pandemic that has driven us all indoors, to an unspeakable mass murder and now a military accident far away.

We shouldn’t despair. Instead, we should remember another old adage: This too shall pass. Grief fades, eventually, and the pain of loss subsides.

We hope that as pandemic restrictions are slowly lifted, friends and family of these six crash victims will be able to come together in some way to bid a proper farewell to their loved ones.