The Firehall Arts Centre is presenting the Vancouver premiere of Our Ghosts by Sally Stubbs, until Sunday, April 2nd.
Telling a haunting mystery nearly 70 years in the making, Our Ghosts is written by Sally Stubbs and directed by Sarah Rodgers and produced by Our Ghosts Collective in association with Western Gold Theatre. Inspired by the disappearance of the playwright’s own father, the theatre production explores the ramifications of official and personal responses to the disappearance of a plane and its pilots. At the heart of the play, however, is a love story and the mystery that defines one woman’s life and, by extension, the lives of her children: the disappearance from the Comox Air Base of a Canadian Forces fighter jet and, with it, Flight Officer Gerald Stubbs.

During a training flight from RCAF Station Comox Stubbs and a co-pilot disappeared on March 22, 1956, which the play’s opening night commemorates tomorrow. Where and how they ended up baffled the official search and rescue teams of the day. However, over the decades pieces of the wreckage have been, and are still being, found in the Callaghan Valley, near Whistler, which in 1956 was deep, remote wilderness, far from the search area, and as more clues are found the mystery deepens.
“It is great to welcome Sally Stubbs back to The Firehall with our presentation of her script, Our Ghosts,” says Artistic Producer Donna Spencer. “Sally has put together a wonderful team of collaborators to bring this autobiographical story to the stage, sharing the impact of her family’s loss and the reverberations from that loss on others including Search and Rescue workers as well as Air Force colleagues.”
With Opening Night tomorrow, March 22, Our Ghosts runs at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 E. Cordova Street until April 2, 2023. For tickets, special performances including Pay-What-You-Can dates visit firehallartscentre.ca