Into the Abyss (27 page)

That night, as several hikers gathered together around a vigorous campfire, Scott shared his story of survival. The faces of those around the fire glowed with incredulity as he recounted the plane crash and long night in the wilderness. Beside him, Erik slumped grimly, but Scott didn’t seem to notice. Pointing to Erik, he concluded his tale with more good humour than he’d felt in many months: “
This is the pilot who flew the plane.”

Gasps of disbelief erupted and several hikers challenged Scott’s claim. Sitting awkwardly in the shadows, Erik didn’t rush to back him up.

That night, Scott slept soundly. It was Erik who awoke yelling when the rising tide began surging into their tent. He quickly collapsed the poles and grabbed Scott to wake him, narrowly avoiding Scott’s fist, which had come hurtling out of his sleeping bag toward Erik’s face. Though taken aback, Erik would later chuckle about Scott’s reaction, when he reminded him about the warning Scott had issued several weeks earlier as the two men discussed sharing a tent: “
Never touch me when I’m sleeping or I’ll take a swing at you.”

It wouldn’t be the last time Scott surprised Erik. After he moved out late that summer, Scott showed up at Erik’s door one day with a six-pack of beer and a seven-page typewritten legal document. It was a statement of claim Scott had filed in the Alberta courts for damages resulting from the plane crash. Named were Wapiti Aviation, Delbert and Dale Wells, and Erik Vogel. Scott insisted it wasn’t personal, and Erik said he understood.

For a short, intense week in the British Columbia wilderness, Erik had been able to put his troubles behind him. But back in White Rock they returned with a vengeance. Late one August afternoon, Erik stood over the large butcher-block table in his kitchen, opening one
rejection letter after another. Unable to work as a pilot after his licence had been suspended, he’d applied for dozens of different jobs, to no avail. Finally, his neighbour had put in a good word for him for a temporary position mowing lawns with the BC Housing Management Commission. Erik at last reached for a beige envelope bearing the commission’s name and opened it. The brief letter inside read:

It was a far cry from flying, but at least it would help pay the rent. Sometime before he began his job as a groundskeeper, there came a knock on his door. Erik opened it to see an official-looking man standing on his front step.

“Erik Hunter Vogel?” the man asked.

Erik was loath to acknowledge his identity. When he finally nodded, the stranger handed him a subpoena to appear at the rescheduled Alberta government fatality inquiry. Erik felt sick. During the first inquiry, he’d cooperated openly with authorities, made himself available and tried to do what was right. As a result, he’d been publicly humiliated and had lost his pilot’s licence. He had no job prospects other than five weeks mowing lawns, and no money. He’d also put his dad through the humiliation of having to stand behind a son who had committed a high-profile error that had cost the lives of six people, not to mention the financial burden of paying a pile of expensive legal bills. Erik studied the subpoena for a moment. The date for his appearance was October 30, 1985. It would mean flying back to Grande Prairie. That city held nothing
for him but bad memories. Clutching the subpoena in his fist, Erik walked into his kitchen, opened the cabinet under the sink, and tossed the document into the trash.

If Grande Prairie held only grief for Erik, it seemed to offer nothing but promise for Paul Archambault. After the CASB inquiry, he’d been rehired at his old job and settled there.

Whistling happily near the end of his seven-to-three shift, he dragged a damp mop over the worn linoleum kitchen floor of Corona Pizza. Paul had opened the restaurant early that morning as he’d been doing for going on six months. It was almost quitting time as he emptied the grey water from his bucket into a large industrial sink in the restaurant kitchen and rinsed out his mop. He tied off a couple of large green garbage bags, hoisted them over his shoulder and headed down the back stairs to the alley. Outside, the air was hot and still. Paul tossed the bags into the metal bin and pushed his thick hair back from his brow with a sweep of his bare forearm. He wore his hair slightly shorter than he had before the crash and one of the girls at work had given him a gentle perm, which suited him. He was lightly tanned, and though he’d filled out during the months of good living, he still looked fit in a black crewneck T-shirt emblazoned in yellow: “
Corona Mafia.”

The shirt elicited a lot of chuckles from customers and staff, but as far as Paul was concerned the words carried a shred of truth. After the inquiry, Teddy Bougiridis had hired Paul back as janitor. Teddy was a big-hearted bull of a man, an immigrant who ran his business like a benevolent godfather. The number of full- and part-time staff at his booming restaurant and sports lounge was upwards of sixty. Many had been with Teddy and Donna for more than a decade. Paul counted himself lucky to be among them again.

Since he’d been back, Teddy had given him increasing responsibility. In addition to keeping the place clean, his boss often loaned Paul his car and asked him to pick up liquor orders or drive staff to and from work. On occasion, he even let him cook. Paul had put a cap on his own drinking and was the guy Teddy and Donna called on to get patrons home safely if they’d had too much booze. The Bougiridises ran a tight ship, but they were happy to offer work to anyone willing to follow their rules, and this time around Paul made sure he was at the top of their list.

Teddy’s daughter, Elpeda Palmer, was twenty the first time her dad hired Paul. When her dad told her about Paul’s criminal record, she’d disagreed with the decision. But as far as Teddy was concerned, everyone deserved a chance to prove himself. After all, he had come to Canada from Greece with nothing but a hundred dollars in his pocket. Elpeda’s concerns were still there when her dad rehired Paul after the crash, but before long she warmed to him.

“
He looked like Grizzly Adams,” she said, adding that Paul was smart and capable.

Soon she came to view him like an older brother and appreciated his kindness, especially to her sister Sabina, who struggled with bipolar illness. Elpeda eventually trusted him enough to have him baby-sit her two-year-old daughter at the restaurant while she worked.

Paul, for his part, was willing to do anything Teddy and Donna asked of him, and they reciprocated by giving him extra work to supplement his income. The storage shed Paul built in their backyard from scrap lumber is still standing more than a quarter century later.

“
Paul was close to everyone and he was very loyal,” Donna Bougiridis recalled. She and others who’d known him before the crash noticed a change in him. He was less selfish, more caring. He had vowed to end his troubles with the law and, so far, had kept his word. And because he’d saved one of theirs, local RCMP officers treated him
well whenever they saw him, which was often. Corona Pizza was not only a popular eatery for the locals; its downstairs lounge was a frequent after-hours watering hole for many cops.

Paul warmed to the eclectic mix of people in Grande Prairie, people who found a sense of community among the resourceful, unpretentious individuals who populated Canada’s isolated, northern prairie. Few in the north judged a man on his past or who his family was. Because of Paul’s heroic actions and his presence at one of Grande Prairie’s most popular restaurants, he had gained acceptance among a wide circle of people. Affable, humble and a natural storyteller, he got on well with almost everyone he knew.

Paul recalled that time in his life: “
I’m striving to be better for myself—mentally, physically, morally—and I’m not doing too bad.”

The biggest reason for Paul’s happiness, however, was the woman with whom he had fallen in love. At thirty-six, Sue Wink was nine years his senior and a divorced mother of two. When she left her husband, she’d moved to the east side of the city where she rented half a duplex owned by Teddy and Donna. For Paul, it had become home.

Working and living together, he and Sue were inseparable in the months following his return to Grande Prairie, often acting like teenagers experiencing their first puppy love. During that time, Paul’s status had grown from local hero to national celebrity. The event that catapulted him to widespread recognition was his appearance in May 1985 on
Front Page Challenge
, a popular current events show considered an institution on Canadian television. It featured a panel of prominent journalists who had to guess a news story by questioning a guest hidden from view. Many high-profile personalities including Indira Gandhi, Malcolm X, Boris Karloff and
Ed Sullivan had appeared on the show.

Producers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered to pay
for Paul’s rental car, hotel room and travel expenses to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where an episode of the show was being taped in front of a live audience. He rented a brand new Mustang and invited Sue along on the eight-hour road trip. The two felt like honeymooners that week and Sue recalled only one disagreement. It happened along a deserted stretch of prairie highway, when Paul began slowing down for a scruffy-looking hitchhiker who appeared drunk. She’d pleaded with Paul to keep driving, but he wouldn’t listen.

“Sue,” she recalled him saying, “
that’s how I get around.”

When the TV show began, Paul appeared on a raised platform behind the panel and a moderator. Dressed in blue jeans, a sky blue t-shirt and jean jacket, Paul stood under the glare of lights to thunderous applause from hundreds of spectators who packed a large auditorium. Sweat beaded his brow as the panelists began asking questions in an effort to unearth his identity. He was so nervous he initially got several of his answers wrong, forcing the moderator to gently correct him. It may have been Paul’s uncertainty that finally tipped off the third panelist to question him, Canadian author and journalist Pierre Berton.

“Is this a happy story?” Berton asked.

“No.”

“Is there any death involved?”

“Yes.”

“More than one death?”

“Yes.”

“More than ten?”

“No.”

“Is this the plane crash that killed Grant Notley?”

“Yes,” Paul replied.

Again the audience erupted with applause and the panelists turned in unison to regard their unusual guest.

During the commercial break that followed, Paul was escorted to a chair on stage where the panelists continued to question him, this time about his actions that night.

Betty Kennedy’s voice was a mixture of awe and motherly pride as she asked Paul about his survival skills: “How did you know all those things?”

“I probably heard a lot of things in my past that didn’t mean anything,” he said, “but they were buried in my subconscious mind. When I needed to use them I just dug deep and grabbed.”

“So you’re a survivor?”

Paul smiled. “You better believe it.”

“Did a lot of good things come your way out of this? Did it change the course of your life?”

“It’s changed me in the sense that I’ve got so much attention from the news media, and people I don’t know approach me and say good things and it just kind of blows me away.”

“Did they never do that to you before?” Kennedy asked sympathetically, clearly taken with the humble young man in front of her. “Were there not many people who said good things to you before?”

“Sure,” Paul said, a mischievous grin softening his expression. “But I didn’t know so many people before.”

Kennedy laughed heartily, and a chuckle of approval rippled through the audience before guest panelist Laurier LaPierre picked up the thread of conversation.

“How much has it changed your values and your soul?”

“My values?” Paul seemed momentarily at a loss. “My values probably remain the same, I just appreciate things more. Doing what I did,” he said quietly, “I did that because I was the least hurt. I was capable. I was in the right frame of mind. And that was an experience all in itself.”

After several more minutes of questions, Pierre Berton asked a final one: “
Do you consider yourself a brave man?”

Paul dropped his gaze as he thought for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

When Paul and Sue returned to Grande Prairie, life fell again into an easy rhythm. To his relief, the media scrutiny subsided and though he found himself bristling a little when people greeted him with: “Hey, Hero,” he tried to take his new status in stride. Of course, there were perks. At the local disco he and Sue often frequented, women he didn’t know would ask him to dance, and while he was committed to Sue, he didn’t mind the attention.

Sometime that summer Sue transferred from her waitressing job upstairs to work as a bartender in the downstairs lounge. Paul knew the move made sense, allowing them to take turns looking after Sue’s kids, but he didn’t like it. The lounge was open until 2:00 a.m. and drew mostly men. Though the tips were good, he hated the thought of Sue fraternizing with the customers who frequented the bar, especially late in the shift when they were more likely to be drunk and disorderly. Still, he tried to make the best of it.

Mid-afternoon one July summer day, as soon as he finished up his janitorial duties, Paul yelled goodbye to his boss and fellow employees and headed for the door. His and Sue’s house was a 3-kilometre walk away, but if he hurried, Paul could usually squeeze in an hour or two with her before she left for her shift. The northern sun was high in the sky, and warmth radiated from the sidewalk. Flies buzzed lazily inside storefront windows, and kids wheeled by on banana bikes, their Creamsicles melting quickly in the heat. Paul picked up his pace, moving through the afternoon lull of the city, a jaunty spring to his step, his chin tilted slightly skyward. When he passed people on the street now, he would look them in the eye, often nodding or saying hello.