The Consummate Expert in Chivalric Traditions and the Tragic Unexpected

"Something happened with that spear, and he lost control of it or it turned, hit the ground, and as his horse was moving, the tip of it went into him."
"He got off the horse, took some steps and people noticed he was bleeding.
"[The Society for Creative Anachronism observes a] very strict set of rules [and safety measures with its] combat-related activities."
"He was the consummate expert. [It is] shocking to have this happen to one of the best people in our organization."

"It was just something that happened and we still don’t have a grasp of it. [It was] shocking to have this happen to one of the best people in our organization. It is a horrible set of circumstances that caused this."

John Fulton, president, Society for Creative Anachronism

Medieval knight re-enactor Peter Barclay at a previous show

A master re-enactor of Medieval conflict, its appurtenances, courtesies and combat styles and weaponry, Peter Barclay, 53, of Woodbridge, Virginia, a retired Army lieutenant-colonel who became Master Terafan Greydragon when he was performing with the above-noted troupe, inadvertently impaled himself with his lance during a performance competition in Williamstown, Kentucky this past Saturday.

This man was past being merely competent in the use of Medieval weaponry, how to handle weapons once used on the battlefield when Knights of the Round Table rode out in defence of their Lord and Lady. He was, if anyone could be described as such, a master, an expert in the use of lances weighing two to three pounds, metal tipped, seven feet in length and potentially dangerous. But there never had been any untoward and unexpected accident ending in death in these re-enactment performances and no reason to imagine there might be.

Master Terafan Greydragon was a veteran at the games, involved for the past three decades. A man of valour and high intelligence, a consultant at the Pentagon, he had finally reached his retirement years as a professional soldier, but not necessarily as a re-enactor, doing what he obviously loved best; offering re-enactment homage to his professional predecessors.

Photo: Ancient Origins

With over 30,000 members associated with the group, involved with their chapters in the United Kingdom, Austria, Australia and Denmark, Master Tarafan Greydragon was well known for his ease with a lance. So familiar was he with the knightly wielding of a lance that he taught others who aspired to his level of competence and renown how to safely and elegantly use the weapon.

He taught beginners how to ride horses with ease, and to perform the activities associated with the Medieval events and re-enactments, an acknowledged leader in the group, its deputy for activities depending on equestrian professionalism. On Saturday he wore a doublet, a period-era short, tight-fitting jacket traditionally worn at such events.

During the Medieval period, contestants demonstrating their ease with use of the lance and control of their horses during jousts also wore full body armour. But this demonstration that he was engaged in on Saturday was viewed as a casual timed event and as such no other riders were in the ring at the time Master Terafan Greydragon was performing. A performance he would familiarly take part in two or three times monthly.

At the Kentucky event in a large pavilion with spectators present, competitive riders took part in a performance that saw them plucking their lance from a hay bale, then ride with it, handling the lance to spear and raise up a paper plate resting on the ground to demonstrate their proficiency in the use of the spear-ended lance. He was in the process of completing the course when somehow his two-metre-long lance failed his grasp and he was impaled.

He dismounted from his horse, walked a few steps, at which time those witnessing the event realized he was badly injured and bleeding. He collapsed and was airlifted to a hospital. Master Terafan Greydragon was unable to hold out, his vital signs steadily and inexorably diminishing, and he died before reaching the hospital.

Lieutenant Colonel Peter C. Barclay, who died in a freak accident last weekend. (Image: John Barclay)

Reaching For The Sky

"It's [a] blast, man! [To air traffic controller] I played video games before so, you know, I know what I'm doing a little bit."
"Man, I'm sorry about this. I hope this doesn't ruin your day. I'm glad you're not, you know, screwing up everyone else's day [by re-directing air traffic to steer planes away from the flight of the plane absconded with] on account of me."
"I got a lot of people that care about me and it's going to disappoint them to hear that I did this. I would like to apologize to each and every one of them. Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now."
"[I'm a ground service agent] That means I lift a lot of bags. Like, a lot of bags. So many bags."
"[But] it [his job] allows me to do some pretty cool things, too. I get to visit those [geographic places like Alaska, France, Ireland, Mexico] I love the most."
Richard B. Russell, Horizon Air ground service agent

Richard B. Russell, 29, Horizon Air Industries ground service agent : still from video

"They don't necessarily use a key, so there's switches that they use to start the aircraft."
"So if the person has basic understanding -- from what I understand he was support personnel, ground personnel -- they probably do have at least a basic understanding on how to start the aircraft."
Debra Eckrote, chief, north-west regional office, National Transportation Safety Board

"Commercial aircraft are complex machines."
"I don't know how he [Richard Russell] achieved the experience he did."
Gary Beck, chief executive, Horizon Air Industries

"I want to share how incredibly sad all of us at Alaska [Airlines] are about this incident."
"Our heart is heavy for the family and friends of the person involved."
Brad Tilden, chief executive, Alaska Air Group/Horizon Air

"We are going to be thorough, which means taking the time needed to scour the area, delve into other background of the individual believed responsible, and review every aspect of this incident with all appropriate public and private partners."
Seattle FBI field office statement

Planes sit on the tarmac at Sea-Tac International Airport on Friday as service was halted after an Alaska Airlines plane was stolen. (Bettina Hansen / Associated Press)

How well do we know ourselves? Here is a man who on impulse or inner compulsion acted on a wish he may have long harboured to fly a commercial plane. He had no formal training. He used video instructions and simulations to acquaint himself with some basic flying methodology. A huge leap to take from thinking about something of that nature to actively setting out to make it reality. It ended, in the words of Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor of the Seattle region as a "joy ride gone terribly wrong".

Richard Russell had the requisite security clearance for his job. He had worked for the airlines for three and a half years, and was paid an hourly wage pittance for his labour. He knew he was underpaid and resented that, but he liked his job and enjoyed the perquisites that came with it; travel opportunities that he valued despite being paid under the minimum wage limit of $15 an hour.  He worked "on the secure side" of the airport, and he was on shift duty Friday.

"Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess. Never really knew it until now", he remarked casually to the air traffic controller he had been in conversation with and who was guiding him and other planes to avoid his flight path. Are most of us susceptible to sudden, inexplicable impulses to commit to doing things we know will end up badly? He was aware that what he had begun was illegal, a criminal act, a dangerous one and that he could be imprisoned for endangering himself and the public.

He was paid and trusted to handle luggage and cargo and to tow aircraft. But he decided to take a chance, perhaps confident he would survive flying a plane for the first time. He'd had no flying lessons, wasn't obviously capable of applying for a pilot license. But there he was, soaring above the Olympic Mountains after takeoff from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Passengers were stranded in the terminal, alternatively seated in planes parked on the tarmac, their flight delayed while the drama in the sky played out.

Richard Russell enjoyed an hour in the air, admiring the views below at sunset after his 7:30 p.m. takeoff. And he was, as he said, having a "blast". Onlookers from the ground took videos and they watched as he took the plane into deep dives, broad loops and a heart-stopping upside-down roll. This was nothing like working on the ground, loading, fueling, cleaning airplanes. A work colleague who had known him for decades as school chums described him as a regular church goer "so he doesn't really fit the bill of someone who would steal an airplane. Funniest person in the room. Nicest person in the room".

"I do remember him as a nice quiet young man", remarked Rick Christenson, an operational supervisor with Horizon, suggesting that the young married man might have learned to fly from "flight simulator games". About 48 kilometres from the airport the plane descended and crashed on Ketron Island, killing the nice young man.

The plane was a Bombardier Q400, like this Horizon Air plane shown in May 2017. Horizon Air is a sister carrier to Alaska Airlines

Admire Nature's Geology and Respect Limits

"The RCMP and Squamish SAR [search and rescue] have transitioned to a recovery of the bodies from the pool but the terrain is extremely difficult, very dangerous, and the water flow will be heavy with the warm temperatures today, increasing the risk to those in the recovery effort."
"Specialized RCMP and SAR teams are already on site this morning. Until the joint operation is completed Shannon Falls and any trails leading to the pool system at the top of Shannon Falls are closed to the public."
"These pool systems, unless you have the right equipment with you, unless you understand the area, that you're safe about doing it, you should not be up there."
"Currently all teams are being cleared from the area ... until then the park remains closed. I can't say enough about the incredible skilled work done today by the RCMP teams along with Squamish SAR [in recovering the three bodies]."
Squamish RCMP Cpl. Sascha Banks

"Getting the helicopter in to actually do an extraction out of there has its challenges."
"This is the first time I'm aware that anybody has gone over the falls."
"We’ve had a number of dogs that have gone into the water, and people that have slipped into the water as well. Fortunately in the past they have been able to be rescued."

"The granite there is beautifully carved by the water over hundreds of years, and it’s very slick, and with the spray and some of the lichen that builds up on it, people don’t realize how slippery it is."
John Wilcox, Squamish Search and Rescue

The location at Shannon Falls where three hikers were swept to their deaths. (Anita Bathe/CBC)

 On Wednesday crews were preparing to lower RCMP officers by rope from a helicopter into the pool at Shannon Falls in Squamish, British Columbia. The site was where, a day earlier, three experienced adventurers whose exploits were known and celebrated on social media had found their day's outing the culmination of their outdoor experiences, when poor footing and youthful exuberance caused a catastrophic accident taking the lives of all three young people known to search out extreme adventure opportunities.

Ryker Gamble    Facebook
 

The three friends, Ryker Gamble, 30, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper all lost their lives that day after they had set out to have an enjoyable day together hiking up Shannon Falls and on into its pool systems to swim. Megan Scraper slipped and fell from the elevated pond shelf they were swimming in, and fell below to another pond 30 metres below the first. Both men, her boyfriend Alexey and Ryker their mutual friend, attempted to rescue her, both their efforts failing and leading to their own slipping and dying along with her.

There were witnesses to this  unfortunate tragedy. Others of their friends who indulged in risky types of adventuring had accompanied them. They belonged to a travel vlogging group named High on Life SundayFundayz. That group has over a million followers on Instagram and other social media sites. The group stated their purpose was to inform and entertain and inspire others to "embrace all of life's opportunities with a positive outlook and energy".

One of the pools at the top of Shannon Falls. (Anita Bathe/CBC)

They did this constantly on their own account, and in spades. They indulged in continuous exploits that on occasion went above and beyond the margins of safety. In so doing, tending to minimize advice and warnings of an official nature posted within great natural geologic settings of world renown, to the extent of earning themselves a persona non grata distinction. They earned this distinction at various U.S. federal protected lands from which they were banned after flouting safety rules.

They had indulged their adventure passion for visiting sites of surpassing beauty and potential danger in 2016 in Yellowstone National Park where they took part in an out-of-bounds excursion at a particularly sensitive area. This infraction earned them a hefty fine and a week in prison. Beyond rules violations at Yellowstone, Zion, Death Valley and Mesa Verde national parks and Utah's Corona Arch and Binneville Salt Flats were other venues where they indulged their bids for attracting admiration and emulation.

Swimming on Tuesday in one of the icy pools comprising part of the Shannon Falls -- a 335-metre waterfall, about 60 kilometres north of Vancouver -- friends watched, horrified, as they witnessed one of the group swept over the lip of the pool to fall toward a second pool some 30 metres under the first. At 8:30 p.m. later that evening their bodies were located by RCMP. A day later the bodies were recovered.

John Wilcox of Squamish SAR spoke of hikers along the granite outcroppings of the falls unaware that lichen buildup on the rocks makes footing slippery enough so that dogs and people slip on the slick surface unaware of the dangers. To his knowledge all such previous accidents have ended in successful rescues. Not so on this occasion when three adventure-seized young people between 20 and 30 years of age challenged nature for the final time in their lives.

Megan Scraper and Alexey Lyakh have been identified as two of the three people who died near Shannon Falls on Tuesday.

Photograph via Vancouver Sun

Commitment and Tragedy

"The two people with the SUV were taken to hospital and the driver of the van was also taken to hospital where he was treated, released and has been taken into police custody."
RCMP Cpl. Julie Rogers-Marsh, New Brunswick

"I think traffic was his passion. He came to work every day and did a 100 percent job."
"He was always friendly, always a happy, go-lucky guy and he's going to be sadly missed."
Cpl. Darren Galley, Codiac detachment, New Brunswick

"As I got closer I noticed there were cars in places where they shouldn't have been on the side of the road. I noticed a lot of flashing lights and a police car that looked severely damaged."
"They [RCMP] put their lives at risk a lot. They have a tough and difficult job and don't receive a lot of credit for what they do."
John Morris, Photographer, passing motorist, Trans-Canada Highway

Members of the public are being encouraged to sign books of condolences set up at the RCMP detachment in Amherst and at the headquarters in Halifax. (Tori Weldon/CBC)

"It is extremely challenging to describe what it feels like when we lose one of our own. In the RCMP, we are a family and every employee in Nova Scotia and across the country is impacted by the loss of Francis … Frank as he was better known."
"[His actions on Tuesday] speaks to the core of what policing should be — involved in your community, looking out for people, taking the time to do those small things that would go a long way."
"They (Const. Deschenes' family] are dealing with unimaginable tragedy, and I ask that they be given the privacy and respect they deserve as they grieve the loss of their husband, son, brother and friend."
Assistant RCMP Commissioner Brian Brennan

In 2008, Nova Scotia Mountie Francis Deschenes came to the help of a 26-year-old woman near Truro, Nova Scotia. Her vehicle had come to a stop on railroad tracks even while a Canadian National freight train was oncoming at high speed. With the quick thinking this man was noted for, he pushed the stalled car off the tracks using his own cruiser to accomplish the feat with seconds to spare, saving the situation from becoming a tragedy.

A trail derailment could have resulted had the oncoming train collided with the car, and most certainly its inhabitant, the young woman, would have died in the collision. This event earned him recognition as a heroic figure, able to think swiftly of a solution to an emergent calamity. In 2013, by then having been with the RCMP for a decade of distinguished service, he became a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee medal, meant to recognize and honour "significant contributions and achievements by Canadians."

Since then he married, as recently as the past summer. He was in uniform, in a police vehicle when he stopped to assist motorists more recently, two days ago in south-eastern New Brunswick. The officer had stopped on the Trans-Canada Highway to offer help when he saw two people in a SUV trying to change a tire. His specialty with the national police force was as a traffic reconstructionist trained to investigate collisions and determine their causes; a member of the Special Tactical Operations/Tact Troop. Irrespective of the presence of his parked police vehicle, lights flashing as a warning, a driver of a van heedlessly crashed into the cruiser and the SUV, killing Const. Deschenes immediately.

Const.Deschenes, 35, formerly a member of the RCMP's musical ride program, was stationed in Amherst, Nova Scotia, involved in efforts to inform the public that legislation existed in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick requiring drivers to slow down and move over whenever they see emergency vehicles stopped along the highway. It is a supreme irony that this dedicated police officer, who took an especial role with respect to traffic safety would have lost his life while helping members of the public, by the very vehicular homicide he was attempting to alert drivers to.

Flags outside the Amherst RCMP detachment were at half-mast on Wednesday. (Tori Weldon/CBC)

Lavatory Waste: Adding Insult to Injury

"It was like an explosion. It sounded like all the dishes, pots and pans had come crashing out of the cupboard, but it was ice."
"We wouldn't be here today if that ever hit us [the grapefruit-sized chunks of ice that crashed through her house roof]."
"I usually have a bath every night, but last night I didn't -- I didn't want to be the woman found dead in her bathtub."
"It's probably the same as getting struck by lightning. We're leery now, but we're alive and that's the main thing. It's very dangerous those planes going over, but there's not much we can do."
Therese Couch, Calgary resident

"We are in the process of inspecting the aircraft to determine the cause of this incident."
"This is a most unfortunate incident for the family whose home was damaged, and we will be reaching out to pay for all necessary repairs to their home."
Lauren Stewart, spokeswoman, WestJet

Daylight is visible through a hole in the roof of an Ottawa home penetrated by a 'bomb' of "blue ice" (Supplied) CBC

Theresa and Richard Couch of Calgary have the misfortune to own a home in the southwest neighbourhood of the city where they have lived for 42 years. In all those years they have lived with the annoying sound of aircraft passing over their homes, a constant background sound. Because their home sits directly beneath the flight path where planes landing or taking off at the Calgary International Airport fly.

A peculiar phenomenon is known to take place randomly and infrequently, when 'blue ice' falls from a passing plane to the ground below. And sometimes that ice falls through a roof before it has the chance to hit the ground. It's a rude intrusion to say the least, and a potentially dangerous one. Falling from such a height should such a very solid, robust piece of frozen matter hit a soft, yielding object, it is not the ice that would shatter and be destroyed.

In the experience of the Couches, one they would prefer not be repeated, the startling sound and the realization of what had occurred was nothing if not sobering. WestJet confirmed that the ice had fallen from a WestJet Encore Bombardier Q400 arriving in Calgary from Regina this past Friday. What is being politely spoken of as "ice" has been known to fall at times elsewhere, hitting the roofs of unsuspecting homeowners, and penetrating their fastness.

The ice often has a faint blue colouration, and this is because it is permeated with a disinfectant used in plane lavatories. No one actually activates the release of this waste; it is meant to be discharged after the plane lands in a safe manner threatening to no one, disposed of routinely. On occasion things go awry and without anyone actively switching a trigger to release the waste, it breaks away while in flight.

Where it becomes a frozen bomb of human waste.

A very similar incident occurred to a woman living in Ottawa, exactly a year ago, when the roof of her mother's home was penetrated by a piece of "blue ice". "My head was only about 12 or 15 feet away", she stated, disbelievingly. "At first I thought it was just damage to the ceiling. I couldn't tell it went right through the roof when I first saw it", she elaborated. And then she said: "I teach kids Grades 2 and 3 and I told them the story today and they were completely enthralled by it. They said, 'It's aliens!'"

In the Wrong Place at the Right Time

"When the vehicle came to an abrupt stop, the tar washed up and out of its [industrial] container and into the work area of the truck."
Constable Clint Stibbe, Toronto Police Service

"The molten tar had spilled out of the container and completely encased one of the workers in the back [of the truck]."
"He was in great pain, obviously. He suffered significant burning from the tar but at the same time he was trapped. He was trapped in a pool of molten tar. The tar is extremely hot when it's in the pot, but as soon as it hits the air it starts to harden."
"This was quite an unusual extrication for us and quite involved. We had guys outside the truck, inside the truck, on top of the truck." 
"It was more than 40 minutes of clawing and scratching, bit by bit."
Platoon Chief Dave Denysek, Toronto Fire Services

"We were attempting to chip and cut away this tar that had cooled and solidified. As we were chipping and cutting away the tar, gravity pulled him back into the soft tar that was still underneath the outer coating."
"Picture lava that becomes hard on the outside that forms a shell and the inner is still soft. ... So every time we got a little bit of the tar removed from beneath him, his weight carried him deeper into the fresh soft tar and we had to repeat the process."
Capt. David Eckerman, Toronto Fire Services

The paramedics that treated a man who had hot tar spill over him say the burn injuries he has to his head and arms are serious. (CBC News)

Excruciating as a life-threatening trap, this situation presented as a horror show both to the worker who experienced the misfortune of being the central figure in this workplace accident drama, and the first-responders who answered to the need for expertise in extracting an unfortunate individual from the predicament he found himself in through no fault of his own, a victim of circumstances that no one could possibly have been able to foretell.

A predicament that threatened to end his life had any more time elapsed between when he was initially trapped in a molten eruption when the truck he was travelling in at a work site suddenly emulated a volcano in the throes of vomiting up its fiery core in a stream of liquid, flaming rock. In this instance, the 46-year-old worker would have had no premonition when he left his home that late September morning that a few hours later he would be fighting for his life in a Toronto hospital.

Liquefied tar wrapped its loving tentacles around the man the way a deadly monster of mythic proportions might have done, prepared to eat away his flesh and bury him within the scalding morass when a road repair crew was involved in this spectacularly unfortunate accident. The driver of the five-ton truck suddenly hit his brake to avoid running over a piece of equipment that had fallen from the front of the truck.

The three workers at the back of the truck were precisely situated to bear the brunt of the unforeseen. But it was one workers in particular whom fate ushered into position to become the ultimate victim when the 200-C tar spilled into the truck's rear where they were positioned. A side panel of the truck was sliced by firefighters in heat-protective suits who used a reciprocating saw to reach the worker, while Paramedics gave him a pain-reducing injection.

Fire crews at Logan and Danforth Aves. attempt to cut open the side of the truck to rescue the trapped man.  (MARC PERRY / TWITTER) 

The accident scene saw 18 firefighters and two paramedics responding and working to give aid to the man, a slow and agonizing process, given the circumstances. Suspension straps generally utilized to secure unstable vehicles at car crashes were used in this instance to pull under the victim in an effort to stabilize him in place as the firefighters chipped away at the cooling tar with the use of grinders, reciprocating saws and box cutters.

Cutting through the hard outer layer into the pool of still-hot tar that trapped the worker, the interior tar resembled toffee. Serendipity was still with the worker despite the perilous  situation because when he dressed for work that morning he wore a pair of rugged jeans over thermal underwear; a combination of cotton long johns and the jeans fabric helped to keep him relatively secure from some of the burning effects.

His burns would, without that protective barrier, have been even more serious. He was taken immediately upon his release from what might have been a tar coffin, to the outstandingly experienced burn unit at one of Toronto's hospitals, Sunnybrook.