Cape Breton fiddler performs tribute tune written the night of Swissair disaster

Like so many Maritimers, Cape Breton fiddler Brenda Stubbert remembers where she was on the night of Sept. 2, 1998 when she first heard that Swissair Flight 111 had crashed off Peggy’s Cove, N.S.

“I was coming home from a gig in Louisbourg, and I heard it on the radio,” Stubbert recalled. “And I said, ‘Wow, oh my gosh, that’s terrible.’”

That same night, Stubbert went home and wrote a tune as a way of paying tribute to the 229 lives lost.

She called it “The Longest Night.”

“There was so much emotion, you know?” Stubbert said. “Trying to grasp that something like that happened, all those people that perished. It’s just unbelievable, and the families – I couldn’t even imagine.”

The tune was later set to a piece of video with ocean scenery and crashing waves that serve as a poignant accompaniment to the mournful music.

“It’s just something that I wanted to do, in respect to all those people who were lost that night,” Stubbert said.

On the long weekend, as people gathered to mark the 25th anniversary of the disaster, Stubbert’s thoughts were with them as she watched news coverage from her home in North Sydney, N.S.

Her sympathies have also long been with the first responders who were part of the recovery effort in the days and weeks following the crash.

“God bless them all,” Stubbert said. “To go out, to have to do something like that, I couldn’t even imagine. Thank God we have them.”

A quarter century later, Stubbert says there are people who tell her the tune still hits home.

In fact, she performed it Sunday at the annual Acoustic Roots Festival at the Two Rivers Wildlife Park in Mira, N.S.

“(People) say the same thing, (that) it’s a beautiful piece of music, but at the same time it’s sad,” Stubbert said.

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