It was like glimpsing an old friend that early August evening there on the inlet last summer.

There it was, a Grumman Goose, its two big radial motors roaring as it flew just above the water’s surface of our big inlet, heading towards Quatsino, Coal Harbour and eventually its base at Port Hardy.

I admired the smooth round lines of the big beast once again and thought of a dozen different trips on such planes. Sixty years old or more they are, yet the craftsmanship makes them every bit as sturdy as the day they were launched.

Alas, a day or two later that one, or another, plowed into a mountain just behind our town and took a pilot and some Seaspan employees with it into eternity!

And now we find another one gone in a horrific crash on the Thormanby Island! Everyone wondering at the “luck” of Pacific Coastal Airlines for want of a better word. Ironically for me, I was just a few miles north of this second crash that weekend visiting family.

The true tragedy is, of course, in the loss of the people. Families suddenly bereaved of their loved ones and suffering the shock of just how fast such a thing can happen.

I can relate as I too was one who used to leave family behind and fly into the coastal camps for a number of years on these and other craft.

One can just imagine the typical scene on that tragic Sunday morning when those workers left Vancouver bound for the big Plutonic Power project up Toba Inlet.

It’s nearly always the same come plane day. A fellow or two or three show up together. Another’s wife drops him off with a peck on the cheek. A few make the plane still wearing and smelling of the party they had the night before.

But there’s always a guy or two whose young family drives him to the plane and sees him off with a kiss and a smile, and those adorable toddlers wave goodbye to Daddy.

Yes sir, for those who watch it’s always every bit as touching as the old scene where Bogart says bye to Bergman in the film finale of Casablanca.

Then the big propellers start churning and racing, and then slowly we taxi away. One can only hope there were no family men on that plane, but it’s doubtful.

So sad no matter who was aboard. But that’s the risk you take on this big windy, rainy, foggy coast when you sign up for a job. And 999 times out of a thousand there are no problems.

But the Grumman Goose – what a machine! I was in one, flying out of Security Bay in Smith Inlet and we had to go north to pick up another couple of loggers in Kilbella Bay at Rivers Inlet.

There we had to taxi up the river mouth to pick them up and as always there were big spruce trees with root wads still attached and jutting well up out of the river bottom here there and everywhere. The pilots would zig and zag around these with plenty of power thrusts and then we would load up and be gone.

No sooner had we cast off when the pilot, who sat kitty corner from me through the big oval that separates the men and cargo from the cockpit, begins to pass out some Wrigley’s gum to each of us.

As he leans back to give me a piece I looks with eyes big as saucers at a fast-approaching root wad to our port which would soon be dangerously close to our wing tip!

He must have saw the reflection of it or the fear in my eyes because quick as a wink he spun around and applied the power, and turned the nimble amphibian out of danger!

I could have used a diaper. That’s how fast such stuff can sneak up on you.

Sadly, something of the same may have taken place on Thormanby Island last week.