It’s not every day someone witnesses a plane crash but Linda Aboulian sprang into action when a Cessna 185 on floats flipped on the river in front of her house. Aboulian, a candidate in a local civic election Laval, across the Rivière des Prairies from Montreal, was getting ready for a day of campaigning on Wednesday when she and one of her campaign volunteers heard a strange noise. “We were kind of alarmed. We looked out the window and we saw this hydroplane dive into the water nose first and we saw it flip a couple of times.”
While the volunteer called authorities. Aboulian hopped on her personal watercraft and got to the inverted aircraft just before the pilot, and lone occupant, popped to the surface. The older man was uninjured and refused a ride back to Aboulian’s home, saying he was from the Montreal side and wanted to go home. The aircraft was carried by the current downstream and was corralled by authorities who then tracked down the pilot.