Remembrance Day | 20 years ago, the nightmare of HMCS Chicoutimi

He dreamed of serving on a submarine. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. How an accident changed Derek Speirs’ life.

“The first idea I had was: if I die, I hope it will be quickly. »

Derek Speirs will always remember his near-fatal accident aboard HMCS Chicoutimi in 2004. Although he says he has turned the page, he still feels the physical and psychological repercussions, 20 years after the events. For him, this memory has a bad taste of black smoke and post-traumatic stress.

The NCSMs Chicoutimi is one of four used diesel-electric submarines purchased for $750 million by Canada from the United Kingdom in the late 1990s. It is also the last of the lot to be brought back to Canada , in early October 2004, from the British base at Faslane, Scotland. A maiden voyage which proved fatal.

On October 5, while en route to Halifax, a loose nut was discovered on the upper vent of HMCS’s turret. Chicoutimi.

Commander Luc Pelletier ordered the fault to be repaired, despite the storm raging that day off the Irish coast. Despite the heavy seas, both hatches had to be left open so that the technicians were not isolated outside the submarine during the operation. This decision turns out to be fatal: a gigantic wave submerges the submarine, letting 2000 liters of sea water penetrate into it. The flood attacks the electrical cables and causes a short circuit followed by a fire.

Derek Speirs, who was a cook on board, was then in the junior mess with colleagues. His memories are clear: “The whole gang was chatting. I heard like a popcorn noise. Pop. Pop. Pop. I said, Hey, guys, what is this? As soon as I said that, the alarm went off. A big black smoke came in. We couldn’t see anything. Initially, I panicked. After that, the training kicked in. I put on my oxygen mask, then put others on the people who didn’t have one, telling them not to throw up in them so as not to block the air line. All this in complete darkness. By being tossed by the storm. »

Derek Speirs thought “for a couple of seconds” he was going to die. He escaped, but not everyone was so lucky. The thick smoke caused by the fire caused the death of an officer and injured six other sailors, who did not have timely access to a source of oxygen.

Once the fire was under control, HMCS Chicoutimi was returned to its original port, where it will remain for a few months before returning to Halifax for repairs.

At the time, this incident made headlines. The purchase of these four “used” ships had been criticized, considered suspicious since the British navy had disposed of them after only 15 years. With good reason: besides the HMCS Chicoutimithe three other submarines purchased in the United Kingdom have had their share of disappointments, with repairs estimated at 1.5 billion and more stays in the garage than in the water.

Nearly 10 years after their purchase, the four submersibles had only completed 254 days of patrol. And would not have made any stay at sea during the year 2019 alone, according to the site The Warzone. THE Chicoutimiin particular, will have to wait until 2015 to be officially reintegrated into the Canadian navy.

Note that the captain and crew of the submarine were exonerated of any blame following a commission of inquiry, even if “human factors” had contributed to the tragedy.

Costly after-effects

For Derek Speirs, life was never the same following this event. Six months later, he broke down during the unveiling of a report on the accident of the Chicoutimi. “The commander took me in his arms and said: ‘look, Derek, you have nothing to prove.’ They sent me home. »

Then the physical problems started. In 2006, Derek started feeling “a little mixed up,” dizzy, “like a feeling like an elevator is falling,” he says. He then had three epileptic seizures, including one that resulted in the fracture of five vertebrae. Result of a predisposition, according to the neurologist, which would have been declared following post-traumatic stress. He never returned to a submarine, having dreamed of being a submariner all his life.

In 2011, after 22 years of service, including three years in Germany, six months with the Blue Helmets in Syria, two stays on warships and a failed Atlantic crossing aboard the ChicoutimiDerek Speirs is discharged from the Armed Forces due to his epilepsy problems.

“I wasn’t experiencing ‘universality’ of the service because I had to take three pills twice a day to control my epilepsy. Just because of that, they took me out. I felt like I was being thrown out like trash. »

The next three years were not rosy, he adds. “When I left the army, I was sick, angry, suffering from post-traumatic stress, I had severe depression, poorly diagnosed spinal fractures, things weren’t going very well. »

Retrained in the civil service, he retired permanently in 2014, at the age of 42. At the same time, he began to get involved in the Veterans UN-NATO Canada organization, the largest group of veterans in the country after the “Legion”, with its some 17,000 members across Canada.

This reconstituted family will allow him to have better access to services for veterans, but also to discover a new vocation, namely supporting former soldiers, sometimes traumatized, who often live in isolation. “About 80% of them are not able to readjust to civilian life,” he said. We are here to give them back the spirit of living,” he says.

In 2024, Derek Speirs became president of the organization, as a consecration of his new life. He still suffers from chronic back pain, but his nightmares, claustrophobia and anger have faded. Despite everything, the episode of October 5, 2004 still remains engraved in his memory. With good reason.

“I think about it often,” he concludes. It changed my life completely. »