Wreck Discovered By Mission (Canada) Surveyor

It was back in 1970 that Roy Brett's plane was believed to have been caught in a storm and disappeared. Nothing was heard from or found of Brett or his plane for 37 years, until now, reported the Mission Record.

Late last month his daughter Elaine received a phone call.

"Are you the daughter of Roy Brett?" asked Mission Royal Canadian Mounted Police Const. Dave Tarchuk.

This was the call for which her family had been waiting for 37 years.

Tarchuk broke the news that the remains of a plane, with call letters CF-EAQ clearly visible, were recently found in Steelhead, just north of Mission. According to Transport Canada, the plane went down in November 1970 and the pilot is believed to be Roy Brett.

Tarchuk, armed with photographs of the wreckage, visited Elaine later that day.

Only partial remains of one body were found, and certain personal items indicated it was Roy Brett. It could take the coroner's office up to one month to positively identify the remains and release them to the family.

The plane was found by a surveyor, said Tarchuk, who investigated the crash site on April 20. It was sitting on the side of a steep hill, difficult to access.

It appears the plane, which was flying low in the poor weather, went down after its wing clipped a tree, Tarchuk said.

Brett was flying a small single-engine fleet Canuck from Powell River to Shilliwack, and had not been seen since Sechelt a number of hours earlier.

In 1970, at age 72, Brett had flown less and less, and one week before he vanished, he told his family he had sold his plane because he couldn't justify renting space at the airport to park it.

Brett was an experienced pilot and had actually crashed near Hope in 1941 and walked away, nearly unscathed.

The search for Brett and his plane was called off after a few weeks in 1970. The weather was poor and searchers doubted Brett could have survived.

FMI: www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca, www.tsb.gc.ca/en