By meadowlakeNOW

Meadow Lake-born pilot dies in Panama City plane crash

Dec 21, 2017 | 3:00 PM

Ron Simard, an airplane engineer, pilot and aviation enthusiast born and raised in Meadow Lake died yesterday when the plane he was flying crashed at the Marcos A. Gelabert Airport in Panama City.

His sister, former provincial health minister Louise Simard, said Ron was an energetic, passionate man who loved his family, friends, hometown, and airplanes a great deal. She said he lived in Chame, Panama, but visited Meadow Lake in the summer months most years.

“Ron had very close ties to Meadow Lake,” she said. “He has a lot of friends [there] and I’ve been hearing from a lot of them in the last day. He loved going back there in the summers, I know that Ron was very fond of Meadow Lake and he enjoyed going back.”

Her brother’s affinity for planes and flying started at a very young age. Their father Robert was also a lover of aircrafts and built the first homemade plane to ever take off in Meadow Lake in the 1950s.

“I think coming out of that, he was motivated to do something like that for himself when he was older,” she said. “He was an airplane enthusiast from a very young age, the ceiling in his bedroom was covered with model airplanes that he had built himself.”

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By trade, Ron was an engineer, and most recently in his retirement was a technician with Red Bull Air Race.

“He was doing what he wanted in his retirement,” said Louise. “He was so enthusiastic about it, he had so much life in him. He was flying all over the place, in the States, Portugal, Budapest.”

She said the entire family is shocked and saddened on the news of the crash.

“He was a really good brother,” she said. “My heart goes out to his wife Pam, son Jim and two daughters Amy and Renee. Our family will certainly miss him, he’s going to leave a big hole.”

Panama’s civil aviation authority, Aeronáutica Panamá, confirmed the incident and Simard’s identity on their Twitter account yesterday, stating that an “aerial accident with experimental aircraft” occurred at the Panama City airport at 1:24 p.m. local time. The authority said experts were investigating the cause of the accident as well.

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @ReporterKath

by meadowlakeNOW

Meadow Lake-born pilot dies in Panama City plane crash

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