What a 50-year-old tragedy has taught us about fate
The definition of the word “fate” is that of “a predetermined state, or end.”
Let’s keep that in mind today as we look back 50 years to the deaths of Ron and Eve White. White’s Corner (Corner 10) at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park is dedicated to their unbounded enthusiasm for motorcycle and auto racing, as well as their efforts to promote and publicize both.
Ron was a freelance racing writer for the Globe and Mail, while Eve organized most, if not all, of the motorcycle races in Ontario. She was the Canadian Motorcycle Association’s newsletter editor and later submitted motorcycle racing stories to the Toronto Star and The Canadian Press. She was the reason Canada hosted a world championship motorcycle Grand Prix in 1967.
They died on Sunday night, Aug. 22, 1971, when the light plane they were riding in was caught in a fierce thunderstorm over Lake Ontario. They were returning from a Can-Am Series race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The pilot also died.
The accident happened eight years after one of the deadliest crashes in Canadian aviation history. Trans-Canada Air Lines (later Air Canada) Flight 831 from Montreal Dorval to Toronto International went down near SteThérèse, Que., killing all 118 people on board. The big DC-8, because of a technological glitch, flew almost straight into the ground.
A blinding rainstorm in the Montreal area had created traffic chaos and caused eight people to miss the flight. A year later, Maclean’s magazine published an exhaustive story about those eight, and others, all of whom put down their good fortune to fate.
A book soon followed. “Voices from a Forgotten Tragedy” traced the lives of people who had been flying standby and died, as well as those unlucky enough to become involved in the crash one way or another — victims’ families, rescue workers, airline employees and journalists.
They were all victims of fate, and the racing industry is rife with other examples.