Barenaked Ladies Singer Survives Plane Crash

TORONTO — The lead singer of the Canadian pop band Barenaked Ladies and three other people survived a plane crash in rural southeastern Ontario, authorities said Monday.

Ed Robertson's Cessna 206 floatplane crashed in a wooded area near Bancroft, Ontario, on Sunday afternoon as he was trying to take off from Baptiste Lake, Ontario Provincial police Sgt. Bruce Quigg said. Quigg said no one in the plane was injured.

Robertson's friend Gord Peel told The Belleville Intelligencer newspaper that the other passengers were Robertson's wife, Natalie, and their friends Julie and Jeff Jones.

Peel, who said he has known Robertson for about a decade, arrived on the scene shortly after the crash and found the four friends walking on a road, shaken but unharmed.

He said the plane stalled but Robertson managed to set it straight down into the trees with its nose resting on the ground. They had to get out through the windows but did not have a scratch, he said.

"Everyone is fine and that is the important thing," Adam Smith, the band's manager, said Sunday night in an e-mail. "That's all the comment we have at this time."

Spokeswoman Julie Leroux said Monday that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is assessing the accident scene to determine whether an investigation will be launched.

Robertson, 37, is host of "Ed's Up" on the Outdoor Life Network. The show documents his travels by plane. He received his pilot's license in 2005 and is described on the OLN Web site as a "recreational pilot." Episodes involve landing his Cessna on water near cities across North America.

This is the second time this summer that a member of the Barenaked Ladies has made headlines. Singer Steven Page was arrested in upstate New York last month and charged with possession of a controlled substance.

Comments

[Swerinjer]

Better luck next time.

[acidfree]

Thanks goodness that he was able to make it out alive.
As far as hobbyist pilots not being good pilots...even the sun shines a sleeping dog once in a while. Consider how many "accomplished" "pro" pilots who don't survive.

[Destin]

Lucky people, and must be more than just a hobbyist pilot to get that thing down in good shape after a stall.

[MajorKong]

Depends on what really happened. News media often report an engine failure as a "stall" because that's the term we use when a car engine stops running.

The term "stall" in aviation has nothing to do with the engine. A stall in an aircraft means that the pilot tried to fly too slow or tried to maneuver the plane too abruptly for the speed he was flying. The wing of the plane "stalls" and stops producing lift. At high altitude you have room to recover. At low altitude it's usually fatal.

If it really was an engine failure at low altitude, he did the right thing - landed straight ahead and steered between the trees.