Aircraft Component
Object
2026.2.2
Aircraft Fabric Piece
Yellow piece of aircraft fabric, folded in half.
MISSING IN LIFE - A Yukon Aviation Mystery
On November 10, 1969 Yukon pilot Ed Hadgekiss and his 17 year- old girlfriend, Kathy Rheaume, climbed aboard his ex-RCAF Mk.II Harvard CF-XEN at the Whitehorse airport, and headed out to the coast at Skagway, bound for Pitt Meadows airfield near Vancouver.
They were never seen again. The en route weather reports along the coast were marginal at best, and not well suited to a wheel plane with no emergency options other than airfields or airports. A massive search was launched out of CFB Comox. After five weeks of plodding through abysmal, winter coastal weather, the search was called off, with no sign of the missing Harvard having been found.
On February 22, 1970, more than two months after the search had been suspended, a Wilderness Airlines charter flight which passed directly over Roderick Island, spotted the overturned Harvard high on a mountain ridge near the south end of the island. SAR crews were deployed to examine the crash site, where they found clear evidence that Hadgekiss and Rheaume had survived their violent arrival, and had camped at the wreck site for a week before striking off downhill to the coast.
Exhaustive searching of the remote, uninhabited island by ground parties turned up scant clues as to their fate: a gum wrapper, Ed's club bag, a boot, a tote bag and other miscellanea, but no trace of the two young Yukoners. Their fate remains a mystery.
In 1986 the wreck was slung off the island by helicopter, and over to private interests on the mainland. Three years later renowned author, the late Jane Gaffin, produced her best-selling book titled Missing in Life, an excellent, well researched account of this bizarre story.
The pilot's joystick removed from the wreck of Harvard CF-XEN. One can only imagine the sweaty, white-knuckled grip that Ed Hadgekiss would have had on this control column in the last seconds before plunging into the dense rain forest of Roderick Island.
On November 10, 1969 Yukon pilot Ed Hadgekiss and his 17 year- old girlfriend, Kathy Rheaume, climbed aboard his ex-RCAF Mk.II Harvard CF-XEN at the Whitehorse airport, and headed out to the coast at Skagway, bound for Pitt Meadows airfield near Vancouver.
They were never seen again. The en route weather reports along the coast were marginal at best, and not well suited to a wheel plane with no emergency options other than airfields or airports. A massive search was launched out of CFB Comox. After five weeks of plodding through abysmal, winter coastal weather, the search was called off, with no sign of the missing Harvard having been found.
On February 22, 1970, more than two months after the search had been suspended, a Wilderness Airlines charter flight which passed directly over Roderick Island, spotted the overturned Harvard high on a mountain ridge near the south end of the island. SAR crews were deployed to examine the crash site, where they found clear evidence that Hadgekiss and Rheaume had survived their violent arrival, and had camped at the wreck site for a week before striking off downhill to the coast.
Exhaustive searching of the remote, uninhabited island by ground parties turned up scant clues as to their fate: a gum wrapper, Ed's club bag, a boot, a tote bag and other miscellanea, but no trace of the two young Yukoners. Their fate remains a mystery.
In 1986 the wreck was slung off the island by helicopter, and over to private interests on the mainland. Three years later renowned author, the late Jane Gaffin, produced her best-selling book titled Missing in Life, an excellent, well researched account of this bizarre story.
The pilot's joystick removed from the wreck of Harvard CF-XEN. One can only imagine the sweaty, white-knuckled grip that Ed Hadgekiss would have had on this control column in the last seconds before plunging into the dense rain forest of Roderick Island.