plane crash – Whistler Museum and Archives Society

New insights on the 1956 CT-133 RCAF Callaghan Plane CrashNew insights on the 1956 CT-133 RCAF Callaghan Plane Crash

September 17, 2026 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

Written by Oliver Matisz

Featured photo: Military Search and Rescue members from the 442 Air Transport and Rescue Squadron (Comox) gather by Callaghan Lake in August 1997.

After logging 20,900 square miles, 800 flight hours, and involving over a dozen search aircraft, The Royal Canadian Air Force suspended a search for a downed CT-133 jet in April 1956. The search was conducted by sea and air across Vancouver Island, where civilian reports of the crash were made. Two pilots, Flight Officer Gerald Stubbs, 32, and Flight Officer James Miller, 23, went missing on March 22nd while conducting a regular training flight after departing from Comox, British Columbia, intending to fly across the Georgia Strait and then return back.

In March of 2026, the Whistler Museum received photographs and correspondence associated with an August 1997 military recovery mission of the aircraft’s fuselage, which was spotted by a private helicopter pilot fighting fires near Callaghan Lake. At the time, the Royal Canadian Navy stated publicly that despite four decades having passed since the plane’s disappearance, “aviators have kept a watchful eye over the known flight route throughout the years.” This more substantial 1997 recovery added clarity to a 1974 discovery of the jet’s canopy approximately two kilometers from the original crash site.

A military helicopter flying over a forested area with mountains in the background. — A military helicopter hovers will conducting recovery operations near Callaghan Lake.

Sergeant Edith Cuerrier was a military photographer dispatched alongside a Flight Crash and Salvage Crew who were flown to Callaghan Lake, about 20 km southwest of Whistler Village, in the first week of August 1997. The lake then served as a base point for military search and rescue helicopter recovery flights to and from the crash site; after initial site inspection of the fuselage it was established that in the absence of ejected aircraft seats, there was no likelihood of finding remains.

The photography collections donated by Cuerrier encompass a wide array of images, including technical crash site documentation, salvage crew members actively reviewing flight paths, takeoffs and landings of aircraft, and activities partaken during downtime. The Whistler Museum additionally possesses a fragment of the aircraft’s canopy, some of the plane’s metal tubing, and a helmet of one of the pilots, all of which we received through donation from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2010. However, for the two pilots’ families, obtaining information on the crash has been a more tedious and complicated process.

In 1987, the late widow of Flight Officer James Miller, Mary Ford, filed a request under the Access to Information Act with the Federal Government, seeking additional closure on her husband’s disappearance. At the time, neither she nor the family of Flight Officer Gerald Stubbs held knowledge of the plane’s canopy being recovered. Ford received a response that included the T 33’s serial number and record that the canopy had indeed been recovered in September 1974, with no further recovery action being warranted at the time. A friend of Gerald Stubbs’ widow noted after the fuselage’s recovery in 1997 that “the history of this has not been one where the family is advised.”

In light of these circumstances, the acquisition of Edith Cuerrier’s work is an important step for our collections in enabling public access to a variety of crash records. With a combination of physical artefacts from the crash site, and newly acquired photographical and textual material; these records will facilitate increased transparency on investigations into the crash.

As a community museum and archives, we endeavour to foster an open collection policy in building knowledge bases and to impartially maintain records. This has aided us in gaining custody of collections surrounding the crash’s history since the early 2000s from a diverse set of donors including both law enforcement agencies and private individuals. These acquisitions also tie into our broader institutional mandate in considering certain relevant regional history beyond Whistler’s municipal boundaries.

We further recognize how a historic absence of answers has negatively impacted the lost pilots’ families, and hope that our stewardship of these records can serve to preserve the memory of Flight Officers Gerald Stubbs and James Miller.

Oliver Matisz is one of two Collections Coordinators at the Whistler Museum this summer, supported through the Young Canada Works Program.

Searching the CallaghanSearching the Callaghan

July 23, 2016 Whistler Museum 0 Comments

1956 was the year that a T33 military jet mysteriously disappeared over the Callaghan Valley area. The two pilots inside were never found and 60 years later only a few pieces have been found that would give us any clue as to what happened to the two men inside the plane when it went down.

The two men were First Officers James Miller and Gerald Stubbs of the 409 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Their flight was only scheduled to take an hour and a half and be within a hundred mile radius of the Comox base on Vancouver Island. Yet just seventeen minutes into their flight they were documented by radar as entering bad weather and were never seen again.

That is until eighteen years later in November of 1974 when the canopy of their plane was found in the Callaghan Valley, nowhere near where the search teams had been looking for the men. Forty-two years after the plane disappeared its fuselage was found not far from the Callaghan Country lodge, and then twelve years later in October 2010, remnants of one of the pilot’s helmets was found and identified by its colours.

Google Earth image of the location of the T33 crash debris. GPS data courtesy Whistler Search & Rescue.

The Whistler Museum now preserves those fragments of helmet in our archive room. It is likely they will have to be sent off to be cleaned at the Royal BC Museum though as our small museum does not have the resources to properly clean them. Archival-level preservation becomes especially challenging when you have multiple types of materials in a single artifact, like, for example, the plastic, foam, metal, and leather in a pilot’s helmet. Fifty-four years in the elements has not been kind to the pieces of the flight helmet and it will take a lot of care for them to be able to be displayed in the future.

The Whistler Museum also has what we can only assume is a piece from the windshield of the plane as well; a large jagged piece of curved plexiglass as well as a chunk of metal tubing. These pieces along with the helmet fragments were donated to the Museum from the RCMP after they were found in 2010.

A television show called “Callout: Search and Rescue” even did an episode on this mysterious crash for the first episode of their third season. The episode covers the Search and Rescue team scouring the Callaghan Valley looking for any missed clues as to what may have happened to the pilots.

In October the Search and Rescue team does an annual search of the Valley and they continuously look for things like ejection seats, helmets or boots. Things that will withstand the elements and will also stand out in the forest. As of the last search in October 2015 nothing else has been found but the search still continues.

For more information check out this feature article written by Pique Newsmagazine in 2015.

By Michaela Sawyer

Pip Brock part 2.Pip Brock part 2.

July 30, 2011 Whistler Museum 2 Comments

This is the second half of a feature on Pip Brock, an early Alta Lake summer resident and pioneer of ski-mountaineering in the Coast Range. For the first half of this article click here.

On 30 July 1935, while Pip and the Mundays were bushwacking north-east of Knight Inlet towards the still-unclimbed Mount Silverthrone, Pip’s father Reginald boarded a chartered a flight from Vancouver to Gunn Lake with Pioneer Airways. That afternoon their C204 aircraft, which also carried David Sloan, managing director of Bralorne’s Pioneer Mines, landed at Alta Lake to pick up Mrs. Brock before continuing northward.

On take-off, windy conditions prevented the pilot from gaining sufficient altitude. The plane banked sharply to avoid the fast-approaching trees and the pilot attempted to re-land on Alta Lake, but without success. They plummeted back to the ground about 400 metres south of Mons, killing the pilot, Bill McCluskey and Mr. Brock instantly. Mrs. Brock and Mr. Sloan were severely injured, and transported via rail to Squamish, where a speedboat and doctor were arranged to take them to Vancouver General Hospital.

The Vancouver Sun’s feature story on the fatal crash. Click the image to view a full-size scan of the article.

The news quickly reached the central coast via the steamships that regularly plied those waters. When a local homesteader heard of the crash, he rushed up the Klinaklini River in his canoe to give Pip the tragic news. He reached the climbing party just before they ascended onto the Klinaklini glacier, at which point they would have been out of contact for several weeks. Pip rushed back to the city to discover the added tragedy of his mother’s passing; she succumbed to her injuries before their boat reached Vancouver.

The Brocks’ deaths was major news. They were an extremely respected and prominent family. Mr. Brock was the dean of applied sciences at UBC, a former Director of the federal geological survey, and a decorated military commander in World War One. He received a military funeral, and to this day Brock Hall at UBC commemorates the esteemed geologist.

Despite the family tragedy, the Brock boys continued to visit their cabin at Alta Lake. In 1937, Pip re-joined the Mundays for two major ski-mountaineering trips into the surrounding mountains. First, in January of that year, while Pip was on winter break from university, the party headed up Wedge Creek where they set up a base camp below tree line near the crest of Wedge Pass. From here they made the first ski ascent of Wedge Mountain, noting that they stood higher than anyone had before in Garibaldi Park, as the winter snowpack lifted them a few meters higher than summer climbers.

A few days later they proceeded to to the Spearhead side of the valley, making the first ski descents of what is today the Blackcomb backcountry. Don Munday’s description of their ski descent of one of the range’s massive icefields—probably the Shudder or Tremor Glacier—remains one of my all-time favourite skiing quotes:

Life has few thrills to equal ski-ing on a glacier. The quite moderate gradient surprised us with its immoderate speed for an uninterrupted half mile—if champagne has feelings when uncorked, they would match ours during those moments.

Don and Pip heading back to Primrose along the PGE railway tracks. Hungry, no doubt. Photo: Phyllis Munday, courtesy British Columbia Archives.

Buoyed by their success, Pip and the Mundays set out on an even more ambitious exploratory ski-mountaineering trip that spring, to Mount Sir Richard. Even today Mount Sir Richard is a fairly committing multi-day ski tour from Whistler or Blackcomb Mountains, accessed from the back of the renowned Spearhead Traverse. Back then skiers didn’t have the luxury of gondolas to ferry them up to the alpine, so they were forced to follow a far rougher route than modern ski-tourers enjoy.

Awaiting for the end of Pip’s school semester in late April, the party headed out from mile 34 of the PGE Railway to a supply cache that Don had previously placed near Cheakamus Lake. Here the party used a raft to pull their supplies to the head of the lake, a gruelling process which took two days itself. From here they continued to pack gear up the Cheakamus Valley to the base of Sir Richard.

Don (on shore) and Pip (on raft) hauling two weeks worth of gear and provisions up a still-frozen Cheakamus Lake. Photo: Phyllis Munday, courtesy British Columbia Archives.

Fighting thick brush, every sort of snow conditions imaginable, and the logistical headaches inherent in such a route, they managed another fine first ascent and an exhilarating ski through the McBride Glacier icefall. The trip took fourteen days. In an article in BC Mountaineer, Pip summed up their journey in typical understatement: “The trip was certainly an arduous one, but the most worthwhile trips usually do require the most effort, and this trip was worthwhile.”

We know little of Pip’s later years, though he continued to hike and climb well into his silver age. Later climbers who met him on the trail recount his genuinely warm and easy-going spirit. Few would suspect the epic mountain adventurers previously undertaken by this gentle old man.

The Brock boys picnicking near Singing Pass, 1930s.

The widely publicized expeditions that Pip and the Mundays undertook together helped convince the sceptical mountain community of the merit’s of ski-mountaineering. It is a testament to their vision that the Coast Mountains are today recognized as one of the world’s premier ski-mountaineering fields.Their wilful hardship, endured solely due to their love of the mountains, should serve as inspiration for those among us who wish to break beyond the confines of mechanized mountain access to discover all that the Coast Mountains’ alpine landscapes have to offer.