Woman who was supposed to be on plane to Bunibonibee Cree Nation mourns friends killed in crash 50 years ago

On June 24, 1972, a plane took off from Winnipeg, set to take eight students home to the northern Manitoba community of Bunibonibee Cree Nation for summer break.

But shortly after takeoff, the plane crashed into a vacant lot between two houses on Linwood Street.

Nine people lost their lives that day 50 years ago — six students attending Stonewall Collegiate Institute, two students at the Portage la Prairie residential school and the pilot. 

"We were supposed to get picked up and I remember just waiting" for a bus to the airport, said Eleanor Brockington, who was a Stonewall Collegiate Institute student and was also supposed to be on that flight home. 

"To this day, I don't know what really happened. I didn't get picked up." 

She waited around all afternoon for the bus, and when it never came, she cried. 

Later that night, she found out from her billet family that the plane had crashed. 

"I don't know why my friends had to leave so soon," she said.

"My mom says that night she could just hear all the wailing that went on into the night, throughout the community" of Bunibonibee Cree Nation, also known as Oxford House, about 575 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

Brockington lost her two best friends from school in the crash — Mary Rita Canada and Margaret Robinson. 

Fifty years later, Brockington still wonders what they would have become. 

"Mary was very pretty, but very shy. She always got me to speak up for her, because she was really shy," Brockington said.

Mary was interested in hair and makeup, and wanted to go to beauty school, said Brockington.

"Margaret was very smart," and dreamed of finishing school and becoming a nurse, she said.