Clergy Win Praise at Peggy's Cove Site of Swissair Disaster
Episcopal News Service. September 28, 1998 [98-2230]
Robert Martin, Editor of The Diocesan Times, the Anglican newspaper for the Diocese of Nova Scotia, Kathy Blair, Staff Writer for the Anglican Journal
(Anglican Journal) If a disaster of the magnitude of the crash of Swissair Flight 111 had to happen anywhere, from the perspective of the victims' families there may have been no better place than the waters off Peggy's Cove.
One of Nova Scotia's most popular tourist attractions became the center of tragedy on the night of Sept. 2 when the plane headed for Geneva from New York plunged into the sea a few kilometers offshore, killing all 229 passengers and crew.
"I will never be able to look out over the water from the cove again without thinking about them," said the Rev. Richard Walsh of Hackett's Cove, the multi-point parish that includes Peggy's Cove. "Spiritually, they are now part of our community."
The Rev. Arthur Nash, regional dean for the area, spent a lot of time with the victims' families as they arrived in the area. Once the shock of the tragedy began to wear off, many of them remarked they couldn't have imagined a more beautiful memorial site for their loved ones.
Family members also praised the quick actions of the fishermen who had raced to their boats to hunt for survivors and the hospitality of the local communities.
The impact of the crash that night shook houses all along the rocky coast. By dawn it was obvious there would be no survivors. The aircraft had disintegrated on impact.
The effect on anyone who visited the floating charnel house the next morning was obvious: returning fishermen who were interviewed before police sealed off the whole area had the closed look of men who had been inside a war zone. The would-be rescuers became survivors who need healing and comfort.
"It will be weeks, maybe months before some of them will talk about it," said Walsh, who admitted he too was overwhelmed by it all.
People volunteered their cars and themselves as drivers, they offered rooms and whole houses to visitors and brought food round the clock when the Sou'wester Restaurant at Peggy's Cove was overwhelmed with police, search and rescue staff, the Coast Guard, the military and international media.
"I'm so proud of them I could just best," Walsh said. He received help from clergy in surrounding parishes as well.
"I was supposed to take over as priest-in-charge of Hubbards but (Rev.) Mark Marshall just phoned up and said, 'I'll take care of it.'"
Other clergy also pitched in with counsel and comfort and helped organize memorial services, including the Rev. Robert Knight in nearby Blandford and the Rev. Sean Taylor in Chester, who started a Web site to provide information and prayers.
Nash was one of many clergy who met the families of the victims at their planes on the Friday and rode with them on buses to their hotels. They were all silent and obviously in shock as they arrived, he said.
He approached those in the hotel who were visibly upset and asked if he could do anything for them. He brought coffee to some and took others to different hotels.
"Many of them thought they were coming to retrieve the bodies," he said, and were shocked to discover there was nothing to retrieve. "Some were quite angry. One many said, 'Do you mean to say I can take nothing of my father home?'"
The families were taken to the crash site on the Saturday. Many brought wreaths of flowers and some sang hymns at the water's edge. That seemed to bring peace to many. The families also attended an ecumenical memorial service in a convention center on Saturday.
There was a distinct change in the mood by Saturday night. "They now started talking to each other," Nash said. "In the beginning they were like zombies." The families began to exchange stories about their loved ones.
Nash lauded the work of the clergy of the different denominations, all of whom worked together to comfort the families and to pull together the memorial service.
"I have never been as proud of the clergy in my life as I have been this weekend," he said.