A New Brunswick podcast is utilizing its platform and the applied sciences of the trendy age to achieve a brand new viewers with a dramatic story about Canada’s aviation historical past — from an period when airport safety was as lax as getting on a bus.
Saint John: Nothing Occurred Right here, in a two-part collection, brings the nation’s first-ever skyjacking to gentle.
Greg Marquis, a historical past professor on the College of New Brunswick Saint John, launched a two-part collection in regards to the incident on his podcast, Saint John: Nothing Occurred Right here. (Mike Heenan/CBC)
Marquis dug deeper and carried out intensive interviews with passengers and crew that had been on that flight.
He mentioned the podcast format has allowed him, and co-host Mark Allan Greene, to achieve an viewers that won’t take the time to attend a historical past lecture or do their very own analysis into historic occasions.
WATCH | ‘It’s form of neat to inform the story once more for a youthful inhabitants’:
Greater than 56 years after Canada’s first sky-jacking, the story finds a brand new viewers
On September 11, 1968, an Air Canada Viscount airplane was hijacked shortly after leaving Saint John — a primary in Canadian aviation. Now, a historical past professor is reigniting curiosity within the occasion in a brand new podcast.
In 1968, boarding a flight was easy. There have been no safety checkpoints and even the necessity to present identification.
Bud Cavanaugh mentioned Sept. 11 of that yr was a moderately boring day to be an Air Canada ticket agent, with solely six folks needing to verify in.
Bud Cavanaugh was the Air Canada ticket agent on obligation that day in 1968. (Mike Heenan/CBC)
He remembers seeing a automotive pull as much as the airport that seemed completely different from the others.
“The licence plate wasn’t the same, it must have been Quebec or Ontario.”
A tall man walked out of the automotive and into the airport. He checked in with no baggage.
That man was Charles Lavern Beasley, a Texas native, carrying a .22-calibre pistol.
‘I knew we were in trouble’
Sue Pridham, simply 19 years outdated on the time, was boarding the flight to Toronto with desires of transferring to the large metropolis for a change, “wanting some different experience, which I certainly did starting out,” she mentioned.
Whereas ready to board the airplane, Pridham remembers seeing a person who seemed suspicious. He was holding a beige raincoat over his arm.
Pridham’s father, who was saying goodbye to her on the airport, identified the person and mentioned, “There’s really something fishy about him,” she mentioned.
She then kissed her mother and father and boarded the airplane.
The person in query entered final, she mentioned, nonetheless with the raincoat over his arm, “I knew then that we were in trouble … I just had that feeling.”
Flight attendants had begun to serve passengers when the person stood up instantly and held a gun to the again of 1 flight attendant’s neck.
Sue Pridham was 19 years outdated when she boarded flight 303. (Mike Heenan/CBC)
Pridham mentioned the flight attendants spoke quietly to one another earlier than they headed again to the cockpit. And dinner was served shortly after.
Beasley barged into the cockpit demanding he be taken to Cuba.
The pilot advised Beasley the airplane didn’t have sufficient gasoline to make it to his most popular vacation spot.
It was doubtless round this time, simply 20 minutes since Cavanaugh had checked-in the hijacker, that crew again on the airport had been notified.
“We found out from the radio range boys out back that the flight had been skyjacked,” mentioned Cavanaugh. “We were all surprised and just waiting for information to come in.”
The airplane’s pilot, Ronald Hollett, advised the Globe and Mail newspaper on the time that the person stormed into the cockpit demanding the flight be rerouted to Cuba. (CBC Archives )
The airplane landed in Montreal about an hour later. “The captain said we had an unexpected guest … and we had to make a stop in Dorval,” mentioned Pridham.
Searching of the window of the airplane, Pridham mentioned you could possibly see RCMP and Quebec police outdoors with weapons drawn.
One factor that struck Marquis when conducting interviews for the podcast was how calm everybody on the airplane appeared throughout this hectic occasion.
And even now, there doesn’t appear to be a lot animosity towards the hijacker.
“I found that interesting, the fact that this guy had a loaded gun in a pressurized cabin and was pointing it at flight attendants and possibly the crew,” mentioned Marquis.
“They had a very mature attitude about what had happened.”
For Pridham, retelling this story has been “kind of neat.”
“For the younger populations, but also for the Air Canada pilots and stewardesses, to bring this back to their mind that their staff went through a horrific time in their lives.”
