Richard Nicholas, pictured, was killed in a car crash outside Oka, Que., the same day that Tom Hanson, a Canadian Press photographer, collapsed playing hockey in Ottawa. Hanson took a photo similar to this one for the Canadian Press. Photograph by: John Kenney , Montreal Gazette

MONTREAL — It was an iconic image of the 1990 Oka Crisis: a masked Mohawk warrior raises his rifle in victory as he stands atop an overturned Surete du Quebec squad car.

Now both the warrior and the photographer who took his picture are dead — both at the same young age, 41, both on the same day, and both in tragic circumstances.

Richard Nicholas was killed Tuesday afternoon in a car crash outside Oka.

Tom Hanson, a Canadian Press photographer, collapsed and died a few hours later, playing hockey in Ottawa.

"It kind of gives people goosebumps," said Nicholas' cousin Sonya Gagnier, a Kanesatake band councillor.

"To think that the very man who took that picture died on the same day at the same age — how miraculous is it that something like that would happen?"

Nicholas and Hanson never met, but the photo is legendary in Kanesatake.

"Everybody has copies of that picture — it's so significant for the people here," said Gagnier.

"It signified everything that we as Mohawk people stood for: strength, pride, and carrying on the fight that's been going on for years, trying to hold on to what land we have."

Montreal Gazette photographer John Kinney was with Hanson in 1990 when he took the picture; Kenney got the shot, too.

"We were the only two people there," Kenney recalled.

"It was the morning of the first day of the crisis. The Mohawks had set up their blockade with the SQ vehicles they'd taken over, and this guy hopped up there on top and looked down the hill and made his defiant gesture.

"It was a quick thing. Neither of us spoke to him. Through the whole summer, I always wondered who he was, but I could never identify him."

It was definitely not a posed shot, Kenney added.

"Months after the fact, I heard that there was talk going around that we had asked him to do that — and that quite bothered me. He wasn't even focused on us; most of the media were way down at the bottom of the hill and that's where he was looking, not at us at all."

In another strange twist, the accident that killed Nicholas on Tuesday occurred on Highway 344 — the same highway he helped block during the Oka Crisis when the picture was taken.

Nicholas was at the wheel of his pickup when it crashed head-on with a car, according to provincial police.

The passengers of the car were slightly injured, but Nicholas had to be extricated from the wreck by firefighters using the "jaws of life."

Taken to a hospital, he was declared dead shortly afterwards.

jheinrich<P>thegazette.canwest.com