The Department of National Defence will be holding a ramp ceremony on Wednesday to honour six service members who died in a military helicopter crash off the coast of Greece.
Though the remains of five have not yet been recovered, that of 23-year-old Sub-Lieutenant Abbigail Cowbrough, a Marine Systems Engineering Officer from Nova Scotia, were discovered last Thursday.
The other five RCAF pilots have been presumed dead.
The ceremony will be held at the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario, with the friends and family of all six Canadians who were aboard the Cyclone helicopter when it crashed into the Ionian Sea during training on April 29th.
People across Canada can view the ceremony via livestream on the CAF Facebook page. It is scheduled to take place at 11:30 a.m. PST on Wednesday, May 6th.
Captain Kevin Hagen, a pilot originally from Nanaimo, is one of the crew members who was aboard the helicopter at the time of the crash.
The missing five members from the crash who have been officially presumed deceased are:
- Captain Brenden Ian MacDonald, Pilot, originally from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia
- Captain Kevin Hagen, Pilot, originally from Nanaimo, British Columbia
- Captain Maxime Miron-Morin, Air Combat Systems Officer, originally from Trois-Rivières, Québec
- Sub-Lieutenant Matthew Pyke, Naval Warfare Officer, originally from Truro, Nova Scotia
- Master Corporal Matthew Cousins, Airborne Electronic Sensor Operator, originally from Guelph, Ontario
The helicopter was based on HMCS Fredericton which had recently sailed from Souda, Greece, as part of a mission of maritime situational awareness in the Mediterranean.
