Tom Frith was really good at life.
That’s what his aunts said at his funeral last July, when friends and family gathered from across the world in Yellowknife and online to say goodbye to the helicopter pilot.
Tom passed away in Fort Good Hope on June 28, 2024. His helicopter crashed while he was using it to fight nearby wildfires.
While an investigation into the crash remains ongoing, the Helicopter Association of Canada has said the Transportation Safety Board is looking at the possible failure of a tension torsion strap, a flight-critical piece of hardware.
In Fort Good Hope, Tom is remembered as the man who saved the community’s culture camp, with whom they loved chatting over breakfast, even if they had trouble understanding his Australian accent.
To his family and friends, he was charismatic, loyal, handsome, the life of the party and “a bloody good bloke,” while being a great father, husband, brother, son, nephew, cousin and grandson.
“It’s really difficult for me to describe Tom because I worry I won’t be able to fully capture the amazing person he was. All I want, more than anything, is to honour him, because he is so deserving of that. I really wish he were still here,” said his wife, Julia Frith, a year after his death.
“He made me feel immensely loved, like I could do anything, like we could take on anything together. He made me laugh. He made me feel beautiful. This isn’t about me, but I think sharing how he made me feel shows how amazing a partner he was.”
Julia and Tom had two sons, George and Eli. George was just about to turn three and Eli was under a year old when they lost their dad.
“He was incredibly smart, funny and compassionate,” Julia wrote. “And all of these qualities made him the best dad. So patient, so loving and so much fun. Being a dad was something he always dreamed of, I wish he had longer with our boys. He would be so proud of them.”
A fearless leader
Tom was born in Queensland, Australia, on October 31, 1990 and raised in Taunton, a rural farming community in eastern Australia.
He grew up building stunts for his motorbike, camping in the Outback, barefoot waterskiing, captaining his school’s rugby team, wrestling with his four younger brothers, floating down Eli Creek on Fraser Island, making sandwiches with precision, and laughing.
He will be remembered both as the fearless leader that got his friends and brothers into trouble, and as the one who always found the fun in life and was always up for an adventure.
“We sat on sand dunes by a creek, just chatting,” recalled his grandmother, Jenny Frith, of Tom’s last visit to Australia and Fraser Island.
“It was lovely. It was lovely that the young boy had grown into an adult that I could now chat to on an equal level. I cannot believe I won’t get to do that again.”
After boarding school, Tom spent a year at home farming for family friends before heading to Brisbane to study aviation, where he also became an experienced sky diver.
He later transitioned from fixed-wing aircraft to helicopters, using them to muster cattle on a massive 3.6-million-acre farm.
In 2018, he moved to Canada, where he met Julia at Folk on the Rocks – Yellowknife’s summer music festival – and began talking to his friends about her, rather than his usual pastime of simply talking about helicopters.
He spent the next few years working across the territory for Great Slave Helicopters and welcoming his two sons into the world in 2021 and 2023.
“I remember when he told me he was going to be a dad for the first time, and his face was lit up in pure happiness. Julia, George, and Eli made Tom the happiest of all,” said his friend and fellow pilot Shaun Emeny at the funeral last July.
“He was a caring man who gave everything his all, from flying to sport and most of all, his family and friends. I think Tom’s good mate, Ryan Mutz, said it best. Tom was an absolute gem. He never had a bad day. He was always smiling. He was always in a good mood.”
When he was away for work, Tom would FaceTime Julia whenever he could, not wanting to miss any more of George and Eli growing up than he had to. He shared “a stupid amount of WhatsApp messages,” said his brother Fergus, regularly called home for long chats with his parents, and kept in touch with his friends and grandparents on the other side of the world.
“This loss is an impossibly difficult and painful thing. When I think of Tom, even if he could see us all now, I can’t imagine him any other way than just being ready for us with a smile and a hug, making us feel like everything would be OK,” said Tom and Julia’s friend Zoe Guile at the service.
“Tom loved with confidence so freely and easily. He was obsessed with Julia. He loved her so big and so completely that he also loved me and my family. That is amazing and real, and we will always, always feel it.”
“We look at you as our sister and your sons as our own,” Fergus said to Julia. “This will never change. We love you more than anything, and Tom, I’ll miss you for every day for the rest of my life, mate.”
Fort Good Hope, one year on
A year after the crash, Julia, her sons, her parents and a few close friends flew to Fort Good Hope to visit the crash site and meet the community of 500 people.
“It just felt like an important thing to do,” said Julia of the Saturday visit.
“I’ve never been very religious or spiritual but, after Tom died, I’m just trying to grasp onto anything to hold on to him … it just felt very important to be in the place that he was last alive.”
The Friths, family and friends were greeted at the airport by dozens of community members who followed them a few minutes down the road to the crash site.
Fort Good Hope Chief Collin Pierrot said the community had cleaned up the site, laid down crushed gravel and erected a large cross in memory of Tom.
“If we didn’t have these two helicopters working with us, we wouldn’t have been able to take this fire under control. But with Tom and the other helicopters, we managed to do that,” said Chief Pierrot.
Saturday’s event, the second memorial service for Tom in Fort Good Hope, also remembered the late Harley Pierrot and the events the community had endured a year earlier.
Fort Good Hope also hosted a service last year for Tom and Harley, who had been fatally stabbed on the day the community was ordered to evacuate in the face of oncoming fires.
As the family laid down an Australian flower arrangement and photos at the foot of the cross, the community watched with quiet support. Pierrot and Julia each said a few words and the K’asho Got’ine Drummers performed a prayer song.
“It really, truly felt like the whole community came, which was huge,” said Julia.
“They were so amazing, so kind, so genuine, so calm … I thought it might be really overwhelming and they were just really, really nice.
“What they’ve done shows how much respect that they had for him, and that just means a lot to me.”
The visitors toured the culture camp with community leaders, where an eagle soared overhead as they looked toward the Mackenzie River. Julia said Tom had always wanted a tattoo of Australia’s wedge-tailed eagle across his back, so the moment felt like a sign to everyone watching.
Later, at a community feast, Julia was gifted with a moosehide tufted bracelet and painting by a local artist. In return, she gave the community a family photo of her, the boys, and Tom.
Julia thanked Great Slave Helicopters for helping to organize the trip, Buffalo Airways for chartering the flight for free, and everyone who sent the family a meal or a message over the past year.
“It’s an impossible thing to try and capture him in words,” she later wrote.
“I wish he were still here so that I didn’t have to. Truly the most beautiful person inside and out, who I will miss forever.”
