On Sunday evening, February 13th, 1949, Wallace Siple and his wife Irene and five children were hurrying home to Beaconsfield, Quebec after visiting his parents in Norwich, Ontario. Norwich is east of London, just north of the snow-covered tobacco fields of Tillsonburg and Delhi, Ontario. It was around 7:20. The sky was overcast. There was light snow falling, with freezing drizzle in spots. And out the window, the Siples’ offspring could see the twinkling lights of the lonely farmhouses… they were flying over.
Both Wallace and his wife were pilots. And their family was known as the “Seven Soaring Siples” at the Montreal Flying Club where they were long-time members. They were travelling in the family plane, a two year-old, five-seater Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza with its signature V-tail that made it the one of most distinctive private aircrafts in the sky. They had just left the Ottawa airport at 7:05 after taking on enough fuel for the final 125 air mile leg of their flight from London to Dorval. The Siple children had been on countless flights with their father and mother. In fact, the eldest, Graham (11), was already preparing for his first solo flight… although he wouldn’t be allowed to qualify for his licence until he turned 17.
Walter, owner of the Siple Aircraft Company and the Autoplane Company (a Mercury-Lincoln car dealership) on Côte de Liesse in Montreal, was a superb pilot. He had started flying in 1934 as a bush pilot and had over 5,000 hours behind the yoke in cockpits. A February 18th, 1949 story in the Montreal Gazette reported that he had “piloted the first Hudson bomber across the Atlantic; organized the South Atlantic Ferry Service; test-piloted the first Lancaster bomber built in the Dominion; designed an aircraft used both by Canadians and Americans; and founded an airline.” Nevertheless, despite all this aviation experience, something went tragically wrong as the Siple family’s Beechcraft passed through the sky over Alex Stewart’s farm (N-1/2 Lot 35 Con. 9) on Stewart’s Glen Road north of Dunvegan.
According to a 1949 Montreal Daily Star account of the accident, Mr. Stewart was upstairs when he heard the roar of the plane’s engine, followed by a loud explosion. He and his family rushed out of the house to the scene of the crash and tried in vain to quench the flames with buckets and shovels full of snow. The article went on to describe the site as grisly, with the broken bodies of Siple senior and two of his boys thrown far from the wreckage and toys and colouring books lying scattered in the snow. The plane itself had plowed, nose first, into the ground with such a force that a tractor was needed to pry open the doors of the crumpled airframe.
There was a great deal of speculation at the time as to what had gone wrong: loss of fuel, overcrowding, an engine fire, poor visibility or the lack of de-icing equipment. In the end, the air services branch of the Federal Transportation Department ruled out fire, and overcrowding, concluding that “icing conditions caused the crash.” However, the reality is we’ll never really know for sure. Flight Data Recorders — or black boxes as they often called — didn’t really come into use until 1958. Even today, they’re not mandatory for small private planes.
It’s interesting to note though that less than a month after the Soaring Siples perished, a notice appeared in the two Montreal papers declaring that the estate of the 33 year-old Wallace Clayton Siple had been “adjudged bankrupt”… as were his two companies: Siple Aircraft Limited and the Autoplane Company Inc.
A Kirk Hill Sunday
It’s a sure sign that spring is just around the corner when the congregations of Kenyon and St. Columba Presbyterian churches call an end to the practice of sharing the hosting of Sunday worship services. Rev. Jim Ferrier tells me this annual parting of the ways will take effect starting Sunday, March 6th.
However, before the two church groups separate for the spring, summer and fall, Rev. Jim wants members to be aware that there will be one final blended service… this coming Sunday, February 27th… hosted by St. Columba Church in Kirk Hill. The service is at 11:00 am. Following worship and a “a short interval” which I would assume is a socially-distanced fellowship break, the Kenyon Church will hold their Annual Congregational Meeting.
Robocash nightmares
It rarely happens, but private enterprise appears to be taking a page from the government playbook. Until Covid-19 took the wind out of their sails, public entities like Ontario’s Ministry of Health had been gradually downloading more and more responsibility for patient care to family caregivers. In pre-pandemic times, the cost, and hence scarcity, of nursing staff increasingly meant families had to provide bedside care… usually in their home as the length of hospital stays, for all but the most serious conditions, fast approached zero.
Retail businesses squeezed by rising prices and wages, an increasingly tight labour market and the need to slash costs in the face of online competition are now doing the same. Under the cover of darkness, they are ripping out the majority of their in-person checkouts and installing self-serve kiosks. They’ve made the role of the friendly cashier redundant and downloaded the task of scanning and bagging of purchased items to the consumer. Of late, I dread going into shops at the beginning of the week, knowing that the Robocashers may have struck Saturday night the moment the front door was locked.
I know it’s progress… and that certain cohorts, like millennials and five year-old kindergarten students, take to the self-checkouts like proverbial ducks to water. However, some of us seniors aren’t quite as flexible. It’s not that we’re Luddites and want to take fire axes to the uppity microchips. It’s just that change comes less easily for us.
It beggars belief that the self-checkout industry (or at the very least their customer base) hasn’t figured this out and taken steps to standardize things. I’m not suggesting they all build exactly the same machine. This isn’t Cuba, yet. But there’s no reason why the user interfaces can’t have a similar, intuitive functionality.
If a retailer wants me to help with their bottom line by being their cashier for free, I demand decent working conditions. I shouldn’t have to learn the ins and outs of a robotic cash register for each new store I frequent. One of those “standing on a cloud” rubber cashier mats wouldn’t hurt either.
-30-