In October of 1984, a plane crash in northern Alberta led the newscasts. The leader of the Province’s New Democratic Party – Grant Notley - died in the accident along with five others. Four more had survived, but spent a cold, desperate night waiting to be rescued. They had little in common besides the fact that they lived when others did not. The then provincial housing minister, Larry Shaben was one of those survivors. His daughter, Carol Shaben, wrote a book about the experience called Into the Abyss. It traces how the crash shaped the lives of those four men.
In 2012 CBC’s Liz Hoath spoke to the author and to the two remaining survivors for her documentary. For our special summer archival doc series here is - The Wreckage of Flight 402