Archana Cini, Lookout Newspaper
“This is Rescue 315. We have found the airplane — it’s crashed, and three people are injured. I repeat, we have found the airplane.”
– Ed Vishek in the summer of 1981, speaking on the intercom after locating a downed aircraft near Baker Lake, NWT
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Ed Vishek was a young boy watching the Avro CF-105 Arrow streak overhead when he first decided he wanted to fly.
“It was probably the hottest plane in the world at the time,” Ed said. “I wanted to fly that Arrow.” When the program was later cancelled by the Government of Canada, Ed settled on another hope for his adulthood.
“I couldn’t fly the Arrow anymore, so I decided on the next best thing — to fly for the navy.”
Ed Vishek was born in Sudbury, Ont., where his father worked in the mines before the family later settled in St. Catharines, 13 miles from Niagara Falls. His father, a veteran himself, had first immigrated to Canada at 19 after leaving a small country later absorbed into Yugoslavia.
“The way my dad tells it, we got here, we were given a package of cigarettes, a package of tobacco, a package of papers, and then got told, ‘Go.’ That was it.”
What followed was a string of odd jobs across the country, cutting wood in Quebec, mining coal in Alberta, and working a fishing boat off the coast.
Ed was an active sea cadet through childhood. During this time, he remembers sailing aboard His Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Haida, a Second World War destroyer, and being shown the notches carved into the ship’s railing for each enemy ship it had sunk. Ed went on to graduate from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Wings Course in 1962, moving onto flying the Grumman S-2 Tracker (CS2F Tracker) out of Shearwater, NS. For the next ten years, he served aboard American aircraft carriers including the Essex, the Wasp, and the Intrepid.
Ed Vishek (left) shaking the hand of his former flight instructor (right) during his graduation from the RCAF Wings Course. Photo supplied.
On a break between postings, Ed met his wife after turning down a shipmate’s earlier offer to set him up. Their first outing was to Butchart Gardens, a place she had never seen in spite of being born and brought up on Vancouver Island. On his next visit to see her for Christmas, the car he was riding in flipped on an icy road in Washington State.
“I remember waking up on my head with rocks hitting me in the face,” said Ed. He came away with a broken collarbone, among other, more minor injuries. Within a year, Ed was flying again.
The Visheks had two children. Their daughter, Shannon, born in 1963, is now the mother of four sons. Their son, born in 1965 while Vishek was at sea near Puerto Rico, was born with severe asthma.
“Every time the fog rolled in, we’d rush him to the hospital,” said Ed. “It was painful to watch as a father.”
Told to get his son out of the maritime region, Ed requested a posting to Edmonton, even after being warned it would cost him a promotion.
“I said, fine,” Ed remembered. Upon their arrival, Ed’s son was placed in specialized care, where he later passed away. “A loss,” Ed said, “that a parent should never, ever go through.”
It was from Shearwater that Vishek found himself part of one of the most dramatic search-and-rescue missions of his career. “I got called in at two in the morning,” said Ed. “I went to the rescue coordination centre, and was briefed.”
In the summer of 1981, he then flew a CC-130 Hercules (an aircraft often used for search-and-rescue missions), callsign Rescue 315, to Lynn Lake, Manitoba, picked up 11 local volunteer spotters, and began combing a search area approximately 400 miles north of the community for a missing aircraft. “We picked up our first search line, and were on it for around four minutes when an emergency locator beacon came on,” said Ed. “I saw a downed Britten-Norman Trislander, and I knew. I remember using the intercom and saying ‘This is Rescue 315. We have found the airplane — it’s crashed, and three people are injured. I repeat, we have found the airplane.’”
The rescue that followed was its own ordeal. A 400-pound survival bundle was parachuted toward the wreck, but strong winds caused it to fly past the airplane, slide across a frozen lake, and eventually sink approximately 11 miles from the crash site. Two members of the crew descended from the Hercules to the crash site, above which Vishek circled for the rest of the day awaiting helicopter evacuation for the injured, which came more than 10 hours later.
One of the three survivors, the aircraft’s co-pilot, Dale McCurdy, later wrote of the crash and the sound of Ed’s approaching Hercules, which felt like an answered prayer to him. The rescue made national news.
Vishek retired in 1992, after 33 years of service. Asked what makes a good pilot, he didn’t hesitate.
“Get rid of your ego,” said Ed. “People get killed because of that ego.”
This story is brought to you in partnership with Broadmead Care, a registered charity and non-profit care provider supporting veterans through long term care and programs that honour their life history, support their abilities, and maintain their dignity. To learn more, call 250-658-0311 or visit broadmeadcare.com
