Our Ghosts uncovers a decades-old British Columbia mystery at the Firehall Arts Centre
For playwright Sally Stubbs, telling the story of her pilot father’s disappearance was part of fulfilling a promise to her mother
Our Ghosts’ Corina Akeson, Barbara Pollard, and Raugi Yu. Photo by Matt Reznek
Our Ghosts Collective, in association with Western Gold, presents Our Ghosts at the Firehall Arts Centre from March 19 to April 2
“PLANES AND SHIPS covered more than 8,000 miles Friday searching for a missing RCAF jet trainer and its two occupants between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland,” begins the Canadian Press story dated March 23, 1956. “Aboard were FO. Gerald Stubbs, 32, formerly of Winnipeg and FO. James E. Miller, 23, formerly of Victoria. Both are married. They were stationed at Comox on the east coast of Vancouver Island.”
Behind that matter-of-fact reportage lies a family tragedy that became one woman’s lifelong quest and the basis of Sally Stubbs’s play Our Ghosts. Stubbs is the daughter of pilot Gerald Stubbs, and she was just 16 months old when his T33 vanished.
“It’s something that I’ve lived with all my life,” the Vancouver-based playwright tells Stir. “When I knew my mother wasn’t going to be with me for much longer, I asked for her permission to write it, because she was really at the heart of the story.”
When the Royal Canadian Air Force called off the search for the missing jet after finding nary a trace of it, Stubbs’s mother, Olive, still had many questions, but it seemed as if the answers would never come.
“She asked at the beginning for any answers that were coming back, any discoveries that were being made, and that was never given to her by the RCAF,” Stubbs says. “She had to eventually go through Freedom of Information et cetera to find out some of the things that happened, and some of the discoveries that were made, eventually, years later.”
Stubbs says Olive’s undying devotion to her husband—and her determination to solve the mystery of his disappearance—set the course of her life and shaped her identity ever afterwards.
“Her life became absolutely devoted to this search, but also it took over who she was,” says Stubbs. “She never stopped loving him. She never wanted anybody else.”
The playwright was too young to have formed any real memories of her father, and her brother was still in the womb when Gerald’s plane went missing. Still, Olive’s obsession eventually became an irksome burden that they also felt compelled to bear.
“It was something that we just got tired of,” she admits. “We didn’t even know him and it went on and on, and it wasn’t until I became a lot older that I recognized how important it was, and how I had not been involved—and how I needed to be involved, to take this over, because I’m the only one left in my family.”
Hence Our Ghosts, which comes to the Firehall Arts Centre this week in a production directed by Sarah Rodgers and starring Corina Akeson, Barbara Pollard, and Raugi Yu. The names have been changed and presumably some events have been fictionalized, but Stubbs says that the play parallels her family’s story in many ways.
“The play was inspired by the disappearance and its impact on those it left behind,” she says. “It’s actually an investigative tale, which is a testament to the love and tenacity of a woman who was determined to uncover the truth, and the journey of her daughter toward learning to live with her ghosts and to take ownership for her family. So we spend time with search-and-rescue workers, and with the family primarily, and the determination of the mother to get up the mountain to find her husband.”
The words up the mountain are a key to the mystery. According to a separate Canadian Press article from the time, the RCAF focused its efforts on following up the lead that crew members from fishing boats reported hearing a crash in the vicinity of Cortes Island.
It wasn’t until 1974 that hikers found the plane’s canopy—not in the Discovery Islands at all, but in the Callaghan Valley, just south of Whistler. This was the first of several important finds. According to the Whistler Museum website, “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.”
Stubbs tells Stir that discoveries are still being made. In 2019, for example, Whistler Search and Rescue found the T33’s left wing. Unresolved questions remain. Only when the answers are uncovered will Stubbs be able to fulfill her mother’s last request.
“She made me promise to take her ashes up the mountain, up in the Callaghan Valley, when there’s some evidence of where his resting place is, and place her with him,” the playwright reveals. “The pilots haven’t been found yet, and the ejection seats haven’t been found.”
The search continues, and Stubbs hopes that Our Ghosts might help unearth more pieces of the puzzle.
“I really hope that by writing this play, and people seeing it, that some answers will start to come in.”
Related Articles
