I WATCH A SMALL AIRPLANE CRASH. 

After we had moved back to Mt. Tolmie [Victoria, B.C.}, in the late 1920's, mom and dad were very excited because THIS TIME they were actually going to buy some property.  It would be ours!  We could stay put.   I was still just a kid and the full significance of this didn't "hit home" until years later.  

On the lot was an old unfinished barn of a place that had been given the name of Rabey's folly, left by a discouraged man who had no doubt given up on his dream and decided to sell.  

The property was on a street named Broadmead, not to be confused with the Broadmead development off of Royal Oak Avenue.  

We were located just behind the [still there 2013] St. Aidan's Hall.  Also on the property was a liveable three-room L-shaped shack and all I can visualize of that dwelling is that the bottom part of the "L" was the kitchen. The top part of the "L"  A living/dining area with a wall and then a bedroom.   I can picture only one bedroom.   Where did my brothers Eric, Reg and I sleep?

Our friends the Lewis family were visiting us one day and I was sitting on the steps with their daughter Jean, who was about the same age as myself.  We could hear an airplane flying about and coming quite close. Its engine had a strange sound.  It was spluttering...,  urrump, urrump, urrump, putt, putt, splutter, splutter, and then silence.  We looked up to see it gliding, slowly getting lower and closer to the ground.  

We watched as it was about to try and land in a field by Jimmy Miller's barn which was across the street from St. Luke's Church on Cedar Hill Road on the west side of Shelbourne.  Of course today [2013], that area is covered with modern houses and the new Highgate Condominiums. 

We shouted into the house, to our parents, what was happening, and then we ran as fast as we could, down the grassy hill at the west end of Broadmead Street, across Shelbourne, and into the fields. We could see the plane had hit the ground very hard and nosed over.  When we arrived on the scene  my memory now tells me there were two men, one still inside the plane [alive or dead I know not], and one outside the plane.  He was conscious but in pain.  We could see why.  I can still see the broken bone protruding from his ankle, all the marrow of it and everything.  Ugh!  I won't forget that.  My brother Eric must have arrived there quite quickly too, because he obtained a small piece of the fabric of the wing or fuselage and kept it for years.  He actually wrote the aircraft registration, G-KAKA and date of the crash, March 10th, 1929, on it.  In the years to follow his treasure somehow vanished from among his valued possessions.