Marten Hartwell

Marten Hartwell (1925 – April 2, 2013) was a Canadian bush pilot in the Canadian Arctic. On November 8, 1972, the plane that Hartwell was flying on a medical evacuation crashed. One passenger was killed on impact, another died shortly after, and the pilot had two broken ankles and could not walk. One boy, David Pisurayak Kootook, survived the initial crash along with Hartwell but perished after 20 days. The pilot was rescued after 31 days. Since the pilot was injured and unable to obtain local food, and emergency rations had run out, the pilot was forced to consume flesh from one of the dead passengers. At the time of his death he lived at Black River, Kings, Nova Scotia.

Leopold Herrmann, born in 1925 in Germany, was given military flight training in 1944, In 1958 he obtained a West German pilot's licence and emigrated to Canada in 1967. He was in the process of legally changing his name to Marten Hartwell at the time of the accident. He died on April 2, 2013 at the age of 88.

On November 8, 1972, Hartwell was given a charter to fly from Cambridge Bay, N.W.T. (now Nunavut) with three passengers who had just arrived from Spence Bay; a pregnant Inuk woman named Neemee Nulliayok, a 14-year-old Inuk boy named David Pisurayak Kootook (who was suffering from appendicitis), and an attending government nurse named Judy Hill. Hartwell was not flying a normal scheduled route, but happened to be in Cambridge Bay after dropping off prospectors on the Barrens. His aircraft, a Gateway Aviation Beechcraft 18, was chartered by the nurse in Cambridge Bay to fly on to Yellowknife where his passengers could receive medical care at the local hospital.

Some time after taking off from Cambridge Bay in bad weather(icing) and low cloud, the plane crashed into a hillside near Hottah Lake, just south of Great Bear Lake. The nurse, Judy Hill was killed on impact. The Inuit woman died several hours later. Hartwell and the young boy survived the crash, although both of Hartwell's ankles, his left knee and his nose were fractured. For weeks the two survived the brutally harsh weather where the average temperature was −37 °C (−35 °F). Kootook was instrumental in the pair's survival by erecting a tent and making fires. He died after the 20th day whereupon the pilot survived by eating part of the leg of the nurse.

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