Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss (2012) is a non-fiction adventure story by two-time National Magazine Award-winning Canadian journalist Carol Shaben. The book describes events surrounding the 1984 crash of a small commuter plane in the Canadian wilderness. Four of the ten people aboard survived: the pilot, a Canadian Mountie, his prisoner, and Larry Shaben, the author’s father. Into the Abyss details the men’s struggle to survive a night of frigid temperatures and describes the life-long emotional impact of the crash. Shaben was on assignment in the Middle East and only learned of the crash and her father’s ordeal by reading it in the Jerusalem Post, two days after the fact. Into the Abyss, an inspiring tribute to the moral strength and courage of the survivors, won the 2013 Edna Staebler National Award for Non-Fiction.

Shaben begins by explaining that small commuter airlines are the lifeblood of the more remote Canadian communities: ferrying people to work in the larger cities and supplying vital supplies and medical aid. Unfortunately, many of these small regional airlines have poor safety records and higher crash rates than major airlines. Wapiti Air, the company responsible for the 1984 crash involving Shaben’s father, is one of those companies. Shaben then details the events that led up to the crash.

On a snowy October night in 1984, nine passengers bound for small, Northern Alberta communities board a Piper Navajo Chieftain commuter plane piloted by young Erik Vogel. Twenty-four years old, Vogel works for Wapiti Air to gain flight hours so he can eventually apply for an Airline Transport Pilot License to get a better job with a major airline. Tired and overworked, Vogel feels pressured by his boss, Dale Wells, to make his flight destinations despite obstacles like bad weather. Vogel is known as a “bush pilot.” Other pilots warn Vogel that Wapiti Air is “bad news.” Wapiti has a record of safety violations and unsatisfactory aircraft maintenance issues, but Vogel loves to fly—his father was a pilot and politician—and wants to keep gaining flight hours. On this night, however, Vogel is worried. The weather is bad, and he will be flying without a co-pilot, into an airport that has no air traffic control, in a plane that is possibly over-weighted with fuel and luggage.



Larry Shaben is flying home for the weekend after a week’s work as the First Muslim Cabinet Minister in the Alberta Legislature. He knows several of the other commuters, including his next-door neighbor who works at a college, and Grant Notley, the well-known leader of the New Democratic Party. Other passengers include 28-year-old Constable Scott Deschamps of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Deschamps is a “bull-chested” outdoorsman. His career is on the rise, and he is conflicted about whether to start a family with his wife, Mary. Deschamps is escorting his prisoner, Paul Richard Archambault, in to face charges. Archambault has a checkered past with a history of breaking and entering and robbery charges on his record. “Brawny” and blue-eyed with long sideburns, Archambault has a good sense of humor, and Deschamps feels comfortable enough with Archambault to take his handcuffs off for the flight.

Vogel feels trapped between a rock and a hard place. Dale Wells wants him to fly into High Prairie regardless that the weather will require him to try for a visual approach. The Ministry of Transport regulations, however, declare that in bad weather a visual transport is illegal. The landing could cost Vogel his license. With ice on the windshield, ice on the propellers, and with only one of the plane’s two Automatic Direction Finders working, Vogel begins his descent into High Prairie too soon, slamming into a snowy hillside of trees at 175 nautical miles per hour. The trees shear off the plane’s wings, separate the engines, and peel back the roof. The plane lands upside down, nose deep in three feet of snow.

Archambault escapes the wreckage with a few cuts and returns to help the other three survivors. He pulls Deschamps out of the plane, where he is partially buried in snow. Archambault starts a fire and gathers extra layers of clothing from the luggage. The other three men are badly injured: Vogel potentially has a punctured lung. Deschamps’s rib cage is broken, and Larry Shaben has a fractured rib and tailbone, and a broken finger and teeth. His glasses are also missing, rendering him essentially blind. For fifteen hours in sub-zero temperatures, the four men encourage each other to keep fighting and stay alive. They share personal stories, asking each other questions such as, if there is “one wish you could have fulfilled right now, what would you wish for?” Shaben juxtaposes the men’s experiences immediately after the crash with the reactions of their families to the news, and descriptions of the rescue effort which launches almost immediately.



The four men are rescued the following day, but their lives are forever changed. Archambault is lauded as a hero and the criminal charges against him are dismissed. He stays on the straight-and-narrow for a while, but a car crash and marital troubles drive him back to pain medication, drinking, and drugs. Archambault dies in 1991. During the frigid hours after the crash, near death, Deschamps feels a reassuring “spiritual presence.” Deschamps leaves the police force and travels the world on a “quest for understanding.” He becomes close friends with Vogel. Deschamps eventually starts a family and returns to law enforcement. Vogel becomes a firefighter. Larry Shaben is haunted by nightmares of the crash. He ultimately leaves his job in politics and becomes a political activist and leader in the Muslim community, advocating interfaith tolerance and helping different Muslim groups find common ground. He dies of cancer in 2008, before Shaben finishes writing Into the Abyss. She manages to share drafts of the manuscript with her father in the hospital before he passes.