This talk is part of the ALLways Learning Series, which invites ALL members and members of our local community to join us for a free, casual lecture each Friday during the academic year (formerly Lunchtime Learning Series).

Abstract: The day after Swissair 111 crashed on the 2nd of September 1998, Tom Juby opened the morgue at the Shearwater Airbase and worked there for two months. He was in charge of fingerprint retrieval and comparisons, logistics of Identification supplies, and quality control to maintain international standards for disasters. On the 1st of November 1998, he was seconded to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to work in the reconstruction hanger for the next 3.5 years. He suppled technical assistance regarding exhibits and physical evidence along with photographing aircraft debris, and attended three times in Zurich to photograph functioning MD-11 aircraft. He estimates that he took nearly two hundred thousand photos of the several million debris pieces, along with several hundred hours of video. In addition, he attended every major test undertaken by the TSB at Boeing, Seattle, CANMET of Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa, and the FAA Burn Unit in Atlantic City, New Jersey to determine the cause of the fire. His story of Swissair 111 was covered by the CBC’s ‘The Fifth Estate’ in September of 2011, having been interviewed by Linden MacIntyre. He has written a book called ‘Twice As Far’, available on Amazon Books, that tells the inside story of the investigation, including what the TSB and the RCMP failed to divulge to the Canadian and World public. 

Biography: I worked for 27 years as an RCMP Forensic Identification Section member at various locations across Canada after being a General Duty constable for five years. After a year and a half in the Prince Rupert B.C. Ident Section, my wife and I moved to Bathurst, N.B. for five years. Then we headed North to Iqaluit for three years, West to Yellowknife for another three years, then to New Minas for eight years. I finally ended up in the Halifax Ident Section, with short periods spent in other Ident Sections (Smithers, B.C., Inuvik N.W.T. and Hay River, N.W.T.) to cover as needed. My duties were like what one would see on the CSI programs on TV as I would attend all types of crime scenes to locate, record, and preserve the physical evidence. That would include fingerprints, footprints, boot, tire and snowmobile tracks, hair and fibres, blood, and anything else that might be foreign to the scene. This involved considerable travel in various types of small aircraft and of course by vehicle. Not every landing was one that the pilot could brag about as several caused damage to the aircraft. Part of my work included extensive training and experience in fire and arson cause determination, with several hundred fire scenes examined, many of which were of a criminal cause. I was one of the RCMP’s best trained and experienced fire investigator in Eastern Canada. I have worked in every province and territory except PEI and the Yukon Territory, and have travelled to crime scenes by boat, plane, train, car, and snowmobile – never though on horseback. During my Ident service, I have gone from the old Graflex press camera using 4x5 black and white and 120 mm colour film to Nikon 35 mm cameras with both colour and B&W film and finally to Sony and Nikon digital cameras. We did our own darkroom work for the black and white film.