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BUFFALO NARROWS, Sask. — Sixty years after two men vanished when their float plane crashed on a northern Saskatchewan lake, RCMP divers have helped bring some closure to their relatives by recovering their remains from deep underneath the lake’s frozen surface.

“I can’t say enough about their efforts. They really wanted to see this through,” said Martin Gran, the pilot’s nephew, who waited by a hole in the ice on Peter Pond Lake last week as divers entered the plane’s cabin 18 metres below.

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“I was happy that I could talk to them and impress upon them how important it was for our family to just see this through. They understood completely.”

The wreckage of the Saskatchewan Government Airways crash, which killed pilot Ray Gran and conservation officer Harold Thompson, was located in July by a private search effort launched by the pilot’s daughter and son-in-law.

Gran was an experienced pilot in the Second World War and had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. He and Thompson took off from Buffalo Narrows, Sask., on Aug. 20, 1959. They were heading out to investigate poaching and deliver mail to La Loche, Sask., but were never seen again.