The Legacy Letters

by Janice Landry

  “The wreckage of the plane was compacted in an area about the size of half a city block. The passengers’ bodies were close to the shattered fuselage in which they had been sitting. A stewardess’ red Air Canada uniform hung from a nearby tree.

  “Jerry Gardiner had just seen his wife and children off on another flight and before returning home decided to wander out to the airport’s observation deck to watch arriving and departing planes. ‘This plane was just coming in to land,’ he said. ‘All of a sudden there was a flash of red and white flames. A wing seemed to be on fire. Then it started to climb and pieces of it began dropping off. It kept burning all the time. I just stood there and felt sick,’” he told the reporter.

  Bill Sandford was working for Federal Newsphotos when the crash occurred. He said he heard “… on the radio on a Sunday morning there has been a plane crash, so I picked up my cameras and my films. I was living at home at the time. ‘I’ll see you later, Mom,’ he remembered saying, as he left for his first major assignment.

  “I got out there [to the crash site] and you can’t even imagine [the] body parts all over, hanging from trees. I’ve never seen that before. It’s like a battlefield. I’m twenty-three years old,” Bill said, “… what really got me was the smell …”

  At this point, Bill made a poignant and powerful correlation between his own work and that of his father. The late Charles Sandford was a veteran of the Second World War. Bill wondered what his father might have experienced during World War II as a member of the engineering corps, who served in France, Belgium, and Germany. Engineers were attached to combat units, cleared mines and booby traps, and liberated Death Camps. Charles never spoke about his war service with his son. Bill realized his father had witnessed a staggering amount of trauma.

  Bill felt most comfortable talking to people over the years “who had the same experience” as he did. Perhaps this was why we felt comfortable speaking with each other, having covered the same beats and spot news, fires, plane crashes, murders, accidents, and other traumatic scenes for years in the media. He did talk and grow close with the many paramedics who attended at the same emergency scenes he photographed. He earned their respect over many years, while showcasing to the public the nature of front-line emergency work.

  He retired after forty-two years, in 2014, and stills misses photojournalism. “I’m the only member of the media who’s ever been inducted into the Pioneers Group with EMS Toronto,” he said. “We meet for dinners and lunches. These are the guys I used to work with on a day-to-day basis. Now they’re either retired or passed on. It bothers me that some of the guys have died. We talk about the good ol’ days. One of the guys said, ‘Bill’s work has showcased the EMS to such an extent that we feel he’s one of us.’ I’m the only one who’s not an ambulance attendant or a paramedic who’s in the group.”

  Bill also spoke of the day he covered a shooting at an Ontario high school. These types of horrors are sadly happening more frequently now, but in 1975, this kind of incident was rare and unimaginable.

  “All this stuff is buried. You start talking about it and the memories come back. I was the first news photographer on the scene. I was in downtown Brampton, where we were living at the time,” the photographer said.

  On May 28, 1975, a sixteen-year-old male student shot and killed a teacher and student and wounded thirteen other students before killing himself.

  The Toronto Star ran a story by Eric Andrew-Gee in May 2015 called “Brampton Centennial students still haunted by shooting rampage 40 years on.” It revealed the ripple effect the school shooting has had decades later for many of those involved.

  “On Monday morning, some of the lockers still had bullet holes in them. Students filed in at the bell, but the beginning of the day was eerily quiet at Brampton Centennial Secondary School.

  “As classes got underway, the voice of principal William Springle came over the public address system: ‘In this earthly existence,’ he said, ‘we may never unravel the mystery that led to the tragedy that befell us last week.’

  “Then normal activities resumed.

  “The previous Wednesday – May 28, 1975 – 16-year-old Michael Slobodian walked into the high school carrying two rifles in a black guitar case. Within five minutes, Slobodian had killed two people and wounded 13 more. He then shot himself fatally in the head with a .444-calibre bullet.

  “The attack left Brampton stunned. Apart from Springle’s speech, there was little official recognition of what had happened in the months and years to come. Many coped with the trauma in silence.

  “For 40 years, Slobodian’s rampage rippled through the lives of people who were there that day, leaving scars and steering fates. Some wrote songs about it, others wrote plays. Some chose their careers because of it, others their homes. Many say they suffered post-traumatic stress. Others say they emerged from the tragedy stronger. …

  “‘A lot of us have never even spoken about it in 40 years,’ said Pam Hand who, as a Grade 9 student, watched in horror while Michael Slobodian put a rifle to his head and pulled the trigger. ‘There’s a lot of people who need to do a lot of healing.’

  “Today, the tragic pattern of school shootings is familiar. Columbine may be the most famous, but at least a half-dozen more have become bywords in the last 30 years: Dawson College, École Polytechnique, Concordia, C.W. Jefferys, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook.

  “But in 1975, and in Brampton – then still many years shy of its expansion into a suburban boomtown – bloodshed in school hallways was virtually unheard of,” the Star story said.

  Bill arrived at the school within ten to fifteen minutes after the shots were fired.

  “I went into the school; something you wouldn’t do today,” he said. In 1975, the access for media at a crime scene was far different than even in the late 1980s when I graduated from the University of King’s College and started working as a journalist. The police would never allow anyone near where the investigation was still ongoing, especially immediately after the violence had just concluded.

  “Back in those days, there were no tactical units and that sort of thing. And I saw two things: a streak of blood down a hallway where somebody had been dragged off to the side, and down another hallway, [there] was a number of cops hanging over a body that was the shooter,” Sandford explained, of the horrors witnessed inside the school.

  “You still think of them,” he said.

  Forty-one years after he stood in the school, Sandford can transport himself back inside as if it were yesterday. “Despite the fact I kinda suppress this stuff, looking at the pictures brings back the memories,” he said.

  Looking in his “memory box” while preparing for our interview had been painful. He said it will be stored away, again, in a bigger box for safekeeping.

  He also owns fifteen years of freelance photography shot for the Star and The Globe and Mail when he worked out of Barrie during the latter stages of his career. Bill wonders what to do with the two full boxes of negatives, in which he has captured many important cultural, political, and social moments in Canadian history. He has considered donating them to a journalism school to study, examine, and catalogue.

  The veteran member of the media has some sage advice for novice photographers and journalists: “You have to show some compassion.”

  As an example, he referred, once again, to the 1970 plane crash which killed all on board. He and other members of the media had later been assigned to go to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery to be present for an interment.

  There were five caskets to be buried, each containing body parts, representing five different religions, the photojournalist explained. The caskets were buried in a row. Bill covered the burial for Federal Newsphotos.

  Let me be clear: no one ever wants to cover a funeral. No one chooses this assignment. You are told to go. It is your job to go. It is one of the hardest assignments I have ever been given. No textbook on Earth can properly prepare you for what to do or say, or what not to do or say. />
  I empathized with Bill because I have had this assignment on more than one occasion. People look at you with hate in their eyes; it is understandable.

  You try to be delicate. You try to be ethical. You try to be professional. These assignments are highly uncomfortable and difficult. You do your best, but the moments and memories linger. At this point in my career, I choose not to cover these types of stories. But someone somewhere is covering them as you read this book.

  In this social media-focused world, we are witness to death daily. Working around grief, trauma, and casualties affects storytellers, writers, editors, producers, photographers, and other members of the media, just like it affects anyone else, including responders and their loved ones.

  Bill remembered one particular moment at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, decades ago, that brought him to tears.

  On the cemetery’s website, there is a short description about the crash and burial called “Air Canada Flight 621 Memorial.” It reads, in part: “A special memorial service was held on this spot on July 30, 1970 and in May of the following year the stone monument [a replica of the one erected to the memory of those lost in the Ste. Therese, Quebec crash seven years earlier] was erected. It is inscribed with the names of all 109 victims. A total of 49 identified and three unidentified victims of the ill-fated Flight 621 are buried here.”

  He picks up the story on the day of the burial at the cemetery. “There was a lady praying …” He paused. “Excuse me,” he said, his voice breaking. The photographer broke down but continued with his description. “… praying at one of the caskets and I shot that picture and it’s on the front page of The Toronto Telegram the next day. I’m still a young guy just starting out. I have a news sense. It’s just starting to grow. I realize I have a picture there that no one else has …”

  Bill had stayed behind after all the other media had left. “I didn’t want to intrude,” he explained.

  I did not ask exactly why he became emotional discussing the picture and moment, but being there and observing the woman’s deep pain has affected him.

  He also referred to a tragic drowning in the Muskoka resort area, where a mother had been photographed, not by him, grieving over the body of her dead son. Bill said he disliked the photo because it showed the woman holding her dead son’s hand to her face. He felt the image had crossed an ethical line.

  The veteran photographer is appalled at the graphic images he sees being broadcast and printed today, globally. He challenges himself about his own work. His frank story should be cause for others in the media to do the same.

  I now also wonder about the appropriateness of some of the stories I covered. Should I have been standing next to Ann and Wayne King the day they visited the site in the woods where their daughter Andrea was found? The sight of Ann tossing the roses onto the ground where Andrea had lain undiscovered for months will never leave me.

  The ability for self-introspection is what makes Bill Sandford a stand-out and leader in his profession. His compassion, dedication to first responders, and strong sense of ethics have allowed him to stand with strangers and bear witness on the worst days of their lives.

  It also has allowed the photojournalist to grow exceptionally close with many Canadian emergency personnel, whose careers he has showcased and shone a spotlight on, for more than four decades.

  It is to that group that Bill Sandford has decided to write his own legacy letter.

  Bill Sandford’s Legacy Letter

  To the emergency personnel I have worked alongside of:

  After forty-two years as a news photographer, I still find it difficult to go back in time and view my work without feeling some measure of grief. Over the years, I made many friends and contacts in the emergency services: police, fire, and paramedics. I was amazed, looking back, at how helpful these people were in getting exclusive photos at major incidents.

  When I had just started my career with the Toronto Sun, I enjoyed meeting up with ambulance supervisors around midnight, when my night shift ended, and the streets were quiet, for a while.

  We didn’t have cell phones in those days, so a code had to be set up on the radios so we would all know where the meet[ing] was. You never knew when all hell could break loose – a major fire, car crash, or shooting – and that would end the coffee break.

  In those early days, [the] mid ’70s, Tim Hortons and Country Style would close on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, leaving no place to meet. I decided to have coffee and cake set up in our High Park residence and have the shift supervisors over. All I had to do was phone the comm[unication] centre and tell them to pass on the message that coffee was ready.

  Having both a friend and a contact in a high-ranking police officer paid off the night of the Mississauga [train] derailment in November of 1979. One of our Sun reporters lived around the corner from the incident, but lost his camera in one of the ensuing explosions. He asked the incident commander if I could come into the scene to “document” the disaster.

  This nod to the respect we had built up over the years had paid off. The front-page photo of the scene [I shot] won a National Newspaper Award that year.

  As always, there is some humour involved in every major incident. I was off-shift when Mississauga “blew up,” as it were, and I was on my way home with milk, as per orders. Toronto EMS brought its ambulance bus to the scene, and set up the on-board coffee maker. I supplied the milk.

  Over the years, as instant communication became possible with cell phones, I got a number of tips on major stories, giving the Toronto Sun a head start or even an exclusive on some of the quirky things that happen in a big city.

  These days, I have been going through boxes of photos and clippings that have documented my days and nights as a “newsie.” My car has always had a stack of scanners, monitoring emergency services, which I would listen to, even on a day off. It’s been hard to wean myself off the adrenalin rush from hearing a “big” call.

  To [my] colleagues in the emergency services: thanks for the trust.

  12

  Dave Ralph: First, First Responders

  Dave Ralph spent more than thirty years listening to some of the most traumatic scenes imaginable.

  We met in 2015 at the Tema Conter Memorial Trust’s Common Threads conference. The retired emergency communicator, trainer, and manager had been a gracious emissary, assisting me during my conference visit and helping to introduce me to a number of people who I have since interviewed.

  Dave, a member of the Toronto EMS Pioneer Association, volunteers with the Tema Trust. He received the TPS award of Pioneer of the Year in 2015 for his work and commitment to the wider community and Canada’s emergency workers.

  He originally had planned to join Canada’s military as a gunner, but his passion has always been in communication, the route he eventually followed. In 1973, mirroring the footsteps of a high school friend, he joined the Toronto Police Service. He entered the field of emergency communications as a junior police radio operator.

  Sworn police members answered emergency phone calls in the 1970s. Dave dispatched the officers, as a civilian member of the Toronto force. As time passed, he rose through the ranks and eventually coached others as a communications training officer. Eight years into the job, he left the police force. “I left the police service because of a critical incident,” Dave explained. “A police officer was shot and killed on a cold March day in 1980.”

  He first noticed something was wrong when his boss showed up at work on a Saturday afternoon and asked if Dave could operate a tape machine and a reel-to-reel recorder to listen to taped interviews investigating what had happened, leading up to the officer’s death.

  “For the next eight hours I relived everything that happened that night. I was locked in a little room [working] with another lady, a staff member, and unfortunately, I came away with the opinion that, if things had have been done differently, the outcome … should have been different; he might not have died,” Dave explained.


  He listened to the phone calls and radio traffic from the officers who had been at the scene. “We were asked to find out who was in command of that scene.”

  The Officer Down Memorial Page, a website devoted to honouring deceased police officers, identifies the thirty-year-old Toronto officer as Constable Michael William Sweet, who was married with three children: “Constable Sweet and his partner Doug Ramsey answered an armed robbery call at a bar on Queen St. The suspects, two brothers, were trapped in the kitchen area. The officers headed in that direction and came under fire. The suspects went down a dark stairway where Constable Sweet was hit by a bullet from a shotgun. Back-up arrived on the scene and the two officers were held hostage. While negotiating their release, one of the suspects was permitted out to bring back liquor. The suspects turned a deaf ear to the pleas of Constable Sweet who had been laying on the kitchen floor bleeding for 90 minutes. An officer at the scene reported hearing the pleas, ‘Help, I cannot breathe’ and then silence. His killers were captured and found guilty. Constable Sweet had served with the agency for 6 years.”

  The Toronto Police Service also has its own tribute to the officer on its Honour Roll webpage. It does not discuss the uproar and fallout over a controversial “stand down” order: “On March 14, 1980, Constable Michael William Sweet and his partner were on patrol when they responded to a robbery in progress. Other officers who arrived shortly thereafter discovered that Constable Sweet had been shot and was being held hostage by the robbers. Constable Sweet pleaded for his life but the robbers refused to let him receive medical treatment. Ninety minutes later, heavily armed police stormed the restaurant and attempted to rescue him. Constable Sweet, however, had lost too much blood and died in hospital.”

  In question was the fact that tactical police officers who responded were initially told to “stand down” and not storm the building. They adhered to the command for a period of time, until, going against orders, they entered the building in an effort to save Constable Sweet and any other hostages.