Plans are coming together for a memorial service to honour the life of Norm Slavik, one of three men who died in a float plane crash on West Cracroft Island last week.
Pilot Kevin Roger Williams, 40, of Lake Country, and Fred Wiley, 42, of Merville, also died in the Air Cab charter flight.
The float plane had left its home base of Coal Harbour before picking up Wiley and Slavik in Port McNeill and heading southeast to a logging operation near Potts Lagoon run by Wiley through his Courtenay-based company Cold Stone Logging.
The aircraft was preparing to land when it slammed into a treed hillside, killing all three men.
Slavik, 59, “has been phenomenally successful in business and our biggest challenge right now for the memorial is finding a place with adequate capacity,” said his brother, Rob Slavik. The memorial is planned for Slavik’s hometown of Surrey.
Norm Slavik and Wiley were both well known in the B.C. forest industry. Their unexpected deaths prompted TimberWest vice-president Dave Whiteley to issue a statement expressing “deep sadness.”
Wiley “had worked for many years as a valuable contractor for TimberWest,” Whiteley said.
Slavik met his wife of 39 years, Sandy, while the two were in Grade 11 at Killarney Secondary School in Vancouver, she said Tuesday. They have two daughters, Gail and Lisa.
“I was 15 and he was 16,” she said. “It just felt right. We’ve been together since then.”
The family has been overwhelmed by the support it’s received, she said.
Slavik spent years working in forestry around B.C. and even took a year off to travel around Europe before coming back tot he province to start a horse-logging operation out of Williams Lake. Slavik started a forest company and eventually bought a sawmill from Fletcher-Challenge in Delta which processed alder.
Recently, Slavik was working as a forestry consultant helping First Nations and clients as far away as Nova Scotia and California.
He was also working with lawyers helping loggers who are facing tough times and possible bankruptcy.
Slavik had considerable experiencing auditing forestry operations and was tasked to audit all the sawmills in B.C. for the 2006 softwood lumber agreement between Canada and the U.S.
It was this role that led Slavik to agree to make the trip to Potts Inlet and take a look at costing out Wiley’s logging operation.
The trip was a last-minute decision for Slavik, who was on a tight schedule because he didn’t want to miss a B.C. Lions football game in Vancouver on Saturday.
Slavik had a suite at B.C. Place and was a member of the Waterboys, an elite group of 120 businessmen who act as the club’s ambassadors.
“Norm was a big fan, passionate about the B.C. Lions and passionate about CFL football — a great, great guy,” said George Chayka, vice-president of business operations.
