Larry Janik was apparently nervous as he and seven friends prepared to board the Cessna Caravan that would take them back to the mainland after two days of hunting on Pelee Island.
There was ice on the wings of the turbo-prop plane and he asked aloud whether they should be braving the trip under such conditions.
But Caravans are workhorses, and are equipped to handle ice. So Mr. Janik's reservations, which were overheard by Ford Crawford, the island resident who had taken the eight men hunting before dropping them at the small airport, were not shared by pilot Wayne Price.
Minutes later the plane was in the sky. Then came a frantic call for help from inside the aircraft before it crashed into the ice of Lake Erie, skidding a long way before breaking through and sinking eight metres below the surface of the frigid water.
An hour after the plane went down in the late hours of Saturday afternoon, the phone at Mr. Janik's home in Kingsville, Ont., about 40 kilometres from Windsor, rang.
A friend had seen reports about the crash on the 6 p.m. news and wanted to check with his wife, Cheryl, to make sure all was well.
"She had heard about this small plane going down and didn't even know that my husband was over on Pelee Island," Ms. Janik, 47, said yesterday.
"She asked where he was and I said 'over there.' And she flipped out on me and I flipped out on her. And then I called over to Pelee Island to the place that they were staying and they said they had got on the plane."
Mr. Crawford wasn't taking calls from the media yesterday. But he told Ms. Janik about the fears he had heard voiced by her husband.
In a sense, Larry Janik was just following his wife's orders. She was still in bed when he got up Friday morning to catch the plane from nearby Windsor to the island for two days of rabbit and pheasant hunting. "I said 'be careful,' like I always do," she said.
Police arrived at her door at 8 p.m. on Saturday to confirm what she already knew. Her 49-year-old husband -- "a great dad," a workaholic who spent 16 hours a day at his refrigeration business, and a man who loved to hunt -- was gone.
The Pelee Island hunt is something Mr. Janik and his friends do every January. Last year they spent two nights on the small chunk of land. "Nothing would keep him from going," said Ms. Janik.
Mr. Janik was well known and well liked in this Lake Erie community of 19,000 -- something that was underlined by the constant stream of people who filed into their home yesterday, bringing food to comfort Ms. Janik and her two red-eyed children, 12-year-old Ian and 14-year-old Kaitlyn.
Similar gatherings were held at homes of the other lost hunters, all of whom lived in southwestern Ontario. The men who perished along with Mr. Janik included Fred Freitas, 39, of Kingsville, brothers Ted Reeve, 54, and Tom Reeve, 50, and Robert Brisco, 47, all of Chatham; Ronald Spencler, 54, and Walter Sadowski, 49, both of Windsor and Jim Allen, 52, of Mitchell's Bay.
Mr. Price, 33, was from Richmond Hill. The 10th person who died, 28-year-old Jamie Levine, was from Los Angeles. She is believed to have been Mr. Price's girlfriend.
Rob Reeve, the son of Ted Reeve, said his father loved to hunt.
"They all did," said Mr. Reeve.
His dad, described by his son as a "caring, hard-working, loving man," was a police officer. That's why it was Carl Herder, chief of the Chatham-Kent police, who arrived in person Saturday night to deliver the bad news. Chief Herder held a news conference yesterday and was overcome with emotion as he talked about the friend he had lost.
Tim Brisco, whose brother Robert was one of the victims, knew all of the Chatham men well.
"I grew up around the corner from Ted and Tom Reeve," he said yesterday, "and all four of them were fine men who have given a lot to the community."
Jim Allen, for instance, was an orthopedic surgeon who operated on Tim Brisco's knee. "He was well known." said Mr. Brisco. "If you had knee or hip or ankle problems you couldn't do better. The London people get referred to Jim Allen here in Chatham."
The other men devoted time to improving environmentally sensitive areas around their city, said Mr. Briscoe.
His brother, Bob, was a real-estate agent who was the father of four grown children.
"Ted [Reeve]did some of the conservation things that my brother Bob was also interested in," he said. "They did a lot through Ducks Unlimited and with wetlands management and have been involved with Canada Wildlife Agency. Different wetlands owe a lot to both of those guys."
Gerald Gemus, the owner of the Gemus Hunting Lodge on Pelee Island, said he had heard a lot about the men who died in the day since the plane went down. They are guys who like to fish in the summer and hunt in the winter, he said.
Pelee Island holds a pheasant hunt in January and February to help supplement the income for some of the islanders. Most people, said Mr. Gemus, go out in the morning and return the same day. Mr. Crawford "has a nice little setup."
Mr. Gemus had planned to take the plane to the island on Saturday to check on his property, and to return on the doomed flight, but he was running late and decided against it. There were 10 people on the Caravan - so perhaps he would have been turned away. Or perhaps Ms. Levine would have stayed behind.
Mr. Gemus will never know. But it is a flight he's glad he missed.
"The Good Lord," he said "must have been watching over me."
The victims
Ten lives were lost in the crash. Not shown are the pilot, Wayne Price, and a friend, Jamie Levine.
Jim Allan, 52, Mitchell's Bay, Ont.
Robert Brisco, 47, of Chatham, Ont.
Fred Freitas, 39, of Kingsville, Ont.
Larry Janik, 49, of Kingsville
Ted Reeve, 54, of Chatham
Tom Reeve, 50, Ted's brothr, also of Chatham.
Walter, Sadowski, 49, of Windsor
Ronald Spencier, 54, also of Windsor
Joe Friesen