--- description: The light of morning showed only a few tangled pieces of metal, and an ugly, water-filled crater—6 ft. deep and 150 ft. wide. It was all that remained of Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831, a... title: Canada: Crater in the Field image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Canada: Crater in the Field by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 6, 1963 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 6, 1963 5:00 AM CUT The light of morning showed only a few tangled pieces of metal, and an ugly, water-filled crater—6 ft. deep and 150 ft. wide. It was all that remained of Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831, a DC-8F jet with seven crew and 111 passengers aboard. At 6:30 p.m., the big red-and-silver jetliner lifted off Montreal’s rainswept International Airport and banked left on course for Toronto 320 miles to the southwest. Four minutes later, townsfolk in Ste. Thérèse de Blainville heard a thunderous explosion as the plane slammed into a muddy field. The kerosene-fed fire raged for hours, despite the heavy downpour. There were no survivors, and no immediate clues to the crash. It was the second-worst commercial single-plane disaster in history, surpassed only by an Air France crash in Paris last year that killed 130. Canada: Crater in the Field ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6833101/canada-crater-in-the-field/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6833101/canada-crater-in-the-field/"},"headline":"Canada: Crater in the Field","datePublished":"1963-12-06T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-13T08:37:32.928Z","description":"The light of morning showed only a few tangled pieces of metal, and an ugly, water-filled crater—6 ft. deep and 150 ft. wide. It was all that remained of Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831, a...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6833101/canada-crater-in-the-field/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6833101/canada-crater-in-the-field/","name":"Canada: Crater in the Field"}}]}] ```