Following is a note from Peter Mansbridge to Susan Bonner, who was on the diverted Liberal plane that landed in Montreal Tuesday night:

I'm sure everyone is a little freaked by your lights on lights off situation and the diverted flight.

It reminds me of a situation on the '79 campaign flight of Joe Clark's. We'd just left Toronto on the way to Charlottetown when I heard a strange "pop" … I was sitting beside one of the two engines of the chartered Air Canada DC-9 and I turned to my cameraman, Dave Hall, and said "Get your camera ready, I'm sure we just lost an engine." He did and we had.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the pilot came on and outlined the problem and that we were heading back to Toronto for an emergency one-engine landing. I won't name names, but there were more than a few well-known journalists who were more than a little rattled by the announcement — some even quickly went into the "head between the knees" emergency landing position even though no one from Air Canada had asked for it.

One person who wasn't freaked out was Joe Clark — he came jaunting back from his front of the plane section and started cracking jokes about the situation, an image of Clark few people would have predicted only minutes before.

It calmed a tense mood. To make a long story short, we landed without any further incident. Air Canada made another DC-9 available and we headed off to Charlottetown and a great big lobster supper.

—Peter Mansbridge