The morning Michael Maurice went back to the Ocean Ranger, his car was stuck in the snow. '’Why don’t you just come back and forget about it?'' his wife Jocelyn said to him. 'That was the last time we saw him, the last time we spoke to him.'
Michael Maurice and his children, Melissa and Jason. Melissa was 4 1/2 and Jason was 6 when the Ocean Ranger went down in 1982. - ContributedST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Melissa Maurice's voice breaks over the phone as she speaks about the dad she barely got to know.“It’s clearly still very emotional,” said Melissa, who was just 4 1/2 years old when her father, Michael Maurice, and 83 other men were lost on the Ocean Ranger when it went down on Feb. 15, 1982.
Melissa remembers refusing to eat for a number of days after realizing her dad wouldn’t be coming back. “We definitely missed a lot. I wish I got to know him,” says Melissa, a legal assistant in Peterborough, Ont. They met when Jocelyne went to work at the LaCoupe salon in Montreal, Que., where Michael was an instructor. They eventually moved to St. John’s for jobs at John Jacques in Churchill Square, as the couple didn’t agree with separatism, which at the time was a political force in Quebec.But the money from two hairdressing salaries wasn’t enough for the family, and they were in debt. Michael got an interview to be a roustabout on the rig.
“I said, ’Why don’t you just come back and forget about it?' … That was the last time we saw him, the last time we spoke to him."Customers who had become friends sat with her all day while the recovery effort went on.For six months, she believed it.
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