wfn.org | 98-2230

[John Rollins <rollins@intac.com>]

Clergy win praise at Peggy's Cove site of
Swissair disaster

98-2230
Clergy win praise at Peggy's Cove site of
Swissair disaster

by Robert Martin and Kathy Blair
     (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.

Healing and comfort
     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.

Meeting the families
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.

--Robert Martin is editor of The Diocesan Times, the
Anglican newspaper for the  Diocese of Nova Scotia. Kathy
Blair is a staff writer for the Anglican Journal, in
which this report first appeared.