Yellowknife (Sep 27/06) - Yellowknife is often described as an island of civilization surrounded by a sea of wilderness. It's all the more apparent if one considers how an airplane can go missing seemingly under everyone's noses.

Frank Avery, 22, wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. - photo courtesy of Gerry Avery

When the crumpled wreckage and remains of famed bush pilot Chuck McAvoy and his two passengers were discovered deep in the Barrens two years ago, it was heralded as the end to a 40-year-old mystery that had stumped many aviation buffs and residents alike.

But one mystery remains in our very own backyard - one that pre-dates even McAvoy's disappearance in 1964.

On the afternoon of Oct. 30, 1960, two young men took off from Yellowknife in a small, two-seater Luscombe Silvaire they purchased together, but never came back.

It's not believed Frank Avery Jr., 22, and Bob Markle, 20, had planned to go very far. They likely remained within view of the town the entire time they were in the air.

Newspaper reports shortly after their disappearance say the pair were seen flying over town and Con Mine that afternoon.

They also may have made contact with the Yellowknife airport minutes before coming in for the day.

Ron Avery, one of Frank's younger brothers, said he saw the plane touch down on skis that afternoon while he was ptarmigan hunting on Frame Lake.

"They were on wheels, but they had switched to skis, and just gone up for a little flight," he said.

Gerry, another Avery brother, said the weather was cold enough for an early freeze-up on Back Bay, where the two men had parked their plane.

He said the ice was strong enough for the Luscombe to take off on skis, which Avery and Markle had put on the morning of their disappearance. "When Ron got back to the house and told mom Frankie was flying, she was surprised," said Gerry.

"She said, 'I thought they were just going to change over (to skis),' but I guess they decided to go for a flight."

Their disappearance launched a massive ground and air search - although somewhat belatedly because the missing men had failed to file a flight plan.

That didn't impress the rigid and bureaucratic-minded co-ordinators with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) search and rescue in Winnipeg. Ron said his dad - a former Air Force officer - had to pull rank to convince RCAF to launch a search three days after the men went missing.

Search crews, along with many local pilots and airlines, covered some 90,000 square kilometres between Rae-Edzo and the East Arm of Great Slave Lake, but not a trace of the men was ever found.

Ron figures Avery and Markle probably ran out of gas and tried land on a nearby lake.

The delay in the search, factored with the extreme cold temperatures and blowing snow that raged in the days following their disappearance, erased any evidence of where the plane went down.

"The weather was bad the next day and the day after that so any breakage in the ice could've been blown over," said Ron.

"It could've easily been missed."

Debra Saftner, Markle's niece, said she was excited after learning that navy divers had found an airplane wing in Long Lake two weeks ago.

"I said to mom, 'wouldn't that be something if Uncle Bob and Frank were in Long Lake, because it's so close to the airport," said Saftner.

That wing, however, is too big to belong to a 20-foot long Luscombe Silvaire.

The family wonders whether cold weather had affected the plane's carburetor. It was sunny that day, but a chilly -25C.

A Catholic priest living on Latham Island saw the plane fly overhead and it sounded like it was having engine trouble, said Markle's sister, Patricia Groves.

"He said he heard it sputter," she said.

Avery and Markle, who worked together at Con Mine, and shared a summer home near Negus Mine, flew a lot that summer.

Markle's log book, which Saftner keeps along with many other mementos of her long lost uncle, is chock full of entries from May to September, 1960, many of them with Avery.

Some dates show the men taking to the air two or three times a day.

"They were both trying to log as many hours as they could to write their commercial licence," said Saftner, although Gerry said Frank didn't want to be a commercial pilot but an aeronautical engineer instead.

Both families haven't given up hope that the missing men may some day be found, that perhaps they were somehow overlooked all these years, and didn't irretrievably fall into the abyss of one the many deep lakes that surround the city.

"It's one of the mysteries of the North," said Saftner.

"Here you have two young men in their 20s who go flying for a few hours on a nice, cold sunny day, and we never see them again."