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A modest memorial in Orléans commemorates one of the deadliest tragedies the city has ever seen.

Eleven nuns and a Catholic priest were among the 15 people who died the night of May 15, 1956, when a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter jet slammed into the Villa St. Louis, a convalescent home for nuns on the banks of the Ottawa River.

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The impact left a crater 10 metres deep.

Photos from the crash, including pictures of those who lost their lives, are on display at the nearby Metro grocery store.

“I used to go in there and ask the clerks, ‘What do you know about this?’ and none of them could tell me,” said Bob Clark, a retired air force officer who organizes an annual commemoration of the crash.

“We are supposed to remember our fallen.”

Cold War tensions were high that spring night when military radar detected an unidentified aircraft coming in from the north toward Montreal. Two CF-100 jets were scrambled to intercept from Ottawa’s Upland’s airport, then an active air force base.