The Snowbirds are back touring with the memory of Capt. Jenn Casey in the back of their minds. It serves as a reminder of the toll it can take on one’s mental health.  

Elaine Ross’s husband, Dan, was a technician for the Snowbirds who took his own life one year ago today. Elaine wrote to Discover Moose Jaw with Dan's story: 


This is a story of the life behind the red flight suits of our Snowbirds. This is not written to criticize the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, the RCAF or Magellan aerospace. I just want people to stop and think about the other people who work for and with the team.  

THIS IS OUR STORY 

It all started to unfold in October 2019 when we were down in Alabama attending a NASCAR race in Talladega and celebrating the 60th birthday of my husband Dan. It was a trip that we had planned and were so excited to attend. On the Sunday of the race, it came up on our phones that there was an incident involving our Snowbirds outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Dan worked on the engines of the planes and right away started going through the work that he had performed on the jets…without even knowing what plane or what engine was involved. Dan was a wonderful tech and so meticulous on everything that he worked on. 

We made our way back to Moose Jaw and Dan was overly concerned about the crash, who was involved in it and were they all ok… It was an exceptionally long and exhausting trip home. We arrived back home at 2 a.m., Dan decided to take a shower and then grab a couple of hours sleep and go into work and find out what he could about the crash. Little did we know that the hot water tank had started leaking and we discovered a basement flooding. We started the cleanup and calling people to come and help us. So, we now have two big stressful events in a matter of a few days. 

Dan returned to work on that Friday and they were all trying to figure out what was going on with the planes. He was stressed and could not get answers as they really did not have any as the investigation would take months. But as always there were people on social media giving their uneducated opinions… planes are too old, and they’ve not being maintained. Dan became increasingly stressed about it.  

Then we receive a call from the storage unit where all the effects from the basement were stored during the renovations. Someone had broken into the unit and smashed and stole items from it. So now we have even more stressors. The basement was all pulled apart, NASCAR collectibles and heirlooms either destroyed or stolen, and the plane crash. 

The following months were spent going to hospitals and doctors to help Dan with his anxiety and depression. Christmas was a total loss as he was anxious to be around people. They seemed to finally get the pills and doctors working to get him returning to his old self. After months of prayer and meditation and medication, it seemed like we were on the right track. He still thought a lot about the plane and the reason for the crash. 

And then COVID-19. 

This brought a whole new stressor. Kids could not come home, and we could not go anywhere. He continued to go to work even on the days when they did not have much to do. He found this extremely hard as he was not used to sitting with nothing to do. The years in the military had trained him well. But his mood was improving and was more relaxed and happier. His obsession with all the bad luck seemed to be fading. He even had fellow workers even came to our house and to help work on his precious buggy. We were also lucky enough to have some of the kids and grandkids had come home for a visit. We were also making plans to take our new camper out as soon as they were opening the campgrounds. We had started to make room for yet another reno on the main floor. We still had two rooms to put down the new flooring to complete the upper level of the house. 

March and April seemed to fly by and our lives were finding our new normal. The house renovations were done and Dan seemed to be settled and finding that he was doing well without taking the medications. He was working on his dune buggy and doing work on the new camper to make it better for us. We had even started packing items and looking forward to taking it out. Our daughter and granddaughter are out from Manitoba and the house was busy and full of laughs. 

And then May 17th happened. 

The day started out like any other Sunday. We had made a quick trip to town for groceries and stopped at Caronport for ice cream. Shortly after 1 p.m., my cell phone went off and when I opened the message it was from a friend of ours who lives in Cold Lake, and inside the message were pictures of a snowbird jet that had gone down in Kamloops. Dan returned to the truck and when he saw that I was crying he asked what had happened. I had to tell him that another bird had gone down. Dan’s reaction was not like anything I had ever seen. He turned ashen grey like all the blood had drained from his face. He then clenched his fists and hit the dash and screamed “that’s it... he was done”. I told him that he can quit his job and we would start retirement a little earlier than we had planned. When we got home, I went to the bedroom and got out his pills that he was on before. He was very quiet and distant. We talked about what may have happened and what plane was involved. And then the press announced what plane had crashed and we knew right away from years of watching them take-off that it was the 11 plane and it would carry the Public Affairs Officer and a pilot. It didn’t take long for the videos to hit Facebook. When Dan saw the video, he knew right away that the pilot had punched out and he was the one who landed on the roof. He could not watch it again, from that time on he would not watch the news or the millions of posts that were all over social media. 

Monday, he went to work as always. He was looking for information and needed to try and figure this out. Information is slow to come out, but we knew that it would take time for anything official to come out. At home, we had watched the crash over and over again and like everyone else was trying to be armchair quarterback as to what happened. 

The media was all over it and it was such a terrible loss for Jenn’s family and our Snowbirds. But something was so different this time. As Dan said over and over “that a little girl had died” because of something he had done wrong. 

For the next week, our family tried to keep news out of the house. But there was no getting away from the sadness and outpouring of sympathy that was displayed all over the base and the city of Moose Jaw. For most people, it was amazing to see the demonstrations of love and caring, but to Dan, it was a constant reminder. He could not run and hide. Even though we tried to make him stay home and play with his grandkids he would say “it was his job and he had to go”. All those years of military training made him go.  

I had kept in touch with one of his co-workers to see how he was doing at work. I would text him during the day as well as his daughter. One of the last ones I got from him said they were practicing the funeral drill outside the door and he was trying to keep the darkness at bay. We encouraged him to please come home. The day the team came home he had gone home before the flyover but I know he saw it on the way home. He worked the days leading up to their return and he was getting a little more depressed as the day for her service approached. 

On May 27th the day before, we were having a really bad day. When he got home from work, he was very anxious and we talked a lot about what was all going on with work. Should he just quit? I told him yes, and we would take the new camper out and drive to the first campground we could and stay until this all passed. We prayed and prayed. I had our son call him as Dan was in a dark place and I knew talking with him may give him some peace. He spent his time doing his meditation and just tried to get him to relax. He then took his meds and we talked some more and we said his prayer and listened to a poem our son had just put out online. He loved it and he listened to it a couple of times and then we went to bed. Dan fell right to sleep as he always did. I put my hand on his head and prayed that God would send him back as he had been after the last crash. 

Now we cannot say exactly what happened that morning. But I can tell you what I DO know. The man that I loved for 46 years, a loving father to four incredible kids, grandfather to 11, loving son, brother, uncle, nephew, and cousin got up at 5 a.m., shaved, took his pills, put on his Snowbird crew chief Jacket, sent a text at 5:30 to work to tell them he would not be at work as he was having trouble with his stomach…walked out our door…unlocked the garage and went in and took his own life. 

So now our family is so broken, but we are trying to keep going. All of us have had some kind of help to get us through each day. We struggled to get through Father's Day, my birthday, Grandkids’ birthdays, his birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and now I have to make it past what would have been our 43rd wedding anniversary. And then to make it past the first anniversary of Jenn’s and his death. 

I would like everyone who reads this PLEASE PLEASE before you put anything on Facebook, Twitter, or anything else… just remember there are real people in and behind the red suits. They are husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters who take to heart the things that are being said. These people who maintain the planes are to be congratulated for work as long and hard to make sure these jets are safe for all who fly in them. Until you have spent time with all the pilots, ground crew, engine builders, people who pack the parachutes, maintain the ejection seats. Please don’t cut them down. They are here to makes us proud to be Canadian and to be proud to be a family member in an extraordinarily large family. They all have feelings and their families have too.  

As the new season is about to start it will be bittersweet to see the planes once again in the air. But the Ross family will always be so proud of what a wonderful 40 years Dan and I had with the Canadian military. 

God Bless the Snowbirds and all who come to see the nine twinkling lights as they dance their way into your heart. 

RIP JENN CASEY 

RIP DANIEL ROSS