Brothers remember Yellowknife chopper pilot killed last year as a bright spark and an awesome dad

Tom Frith, a helicopter pilot who died in a crash while fighting fires in Fort Good Hope, N.W.T., last year, is being remembered by two of his brothers as a loving husband, an awesome dad, and "the bright spark in every room" that he walked into. 

"There was never a dull moment when he was around," said Fergus Frith. "Just personality coming out of every pore."

Oliver Frith, another of Toms' brothers, described him as being high-energy.

"As an older brother he was, yeah, definitely someone that we all looked up to," Oliver said. 

Tom, 33, died on June 28, 2024, when the Bell Textron Inc. 212 helicopter he was flying crashed near the Fort Good Hope airport. He was the oldest of five brothers who grew up on a farm west of Brisbane, Australia. In 2018 he moved to Yellowknife, where he has left behind a wife, Julia Frith, and two sons: George, who is nearly four and Eli, who turns two in the fall.

Saturday marked the anniversary of Tom's death. Julia, along with her sons, parents, and some of Tom's friends, travelled to Fort Good Hope to remember him. They visited the place where his chopper crashed and laid a plaque next to a cross already bearing Tom's name. 

Oliver said the family from Australia wasn't able to be there. Instead, Tom's brothers and parents got together at the family farm and spent the morning looking at photos, swapping stories, shedding tears and sharing laughs. 

The brothers said they have fond memories from trips to a family property on Fraser Island, watching sports games — Tom was a big fan of rugby, the South Sydney Rabbitohs were his team — and a trip the three older brothers took to Vietnam during which they got matching tattoos saying "brotherhood." 

"We're not big sort of tattoo guys at all," said Oliver with a laugh. Even so, he said, it was always a question after that whether the two younger brothers, Harry and Dugald, would get the same ink. 

He said they took the plunge when they travelled to Yellowknife last year for Tom's celebration of life. 

'He was so deeply in love'

Fergus remembers the birth of Tom and Julia's first son, George, as a transformational moment for his oldest brother. He became a different person, Fergus said, with a different purpose for life.

"I remember FaceTiming with him when Georgie was first born and Julia was in the hospital … you couldn't wipe the smile off his face," he said. 

Coming from a big family, Fergus said Tom was always destined to be a dad. And when Fergus and his wife were expecting their own baby, he remembers a particular conversation he had with Tom. 

"He just said, 'look, mate, like you think obviously the amount of love you have for your partner is immeasurable, but once you see your wife and go through the process of having a child … you don't think it's possible to fall in love with your partner any more.'" 

Tom and Julia met at the Folk on the Rocks festival in Yellowknife — Oliver said they made eye contact through a crowd. Both brothers agreed, through laughs, there had always been some disagreement though about who made the first move. 

"Julia is claiming that now she was the one that stood up to the plate and made the first move," said Oliver. The couple had their first baby, George, and got married in a small ceremony in Yellowknife in 2022. 

"He was so deeply in love with Julia and the boys," said Fergus. "And he would let her know all the time too … he wore his heart on his sleeve, he was a very emotional bloke too, very caring." 

A career as a chopper pilot 

Oliver remembers a family road trip where the brothers saw helicopter pilots in action. Those pilots had seemed like rock stars to them, he said, and it may have been the first indication Tom was interested in becoming a chopper pilot himself. 

Tom would eventually pursue a Bachelor of Aviation program at Griffith University in Brisbane and though he wouldn't finish the degree itself, he would get a licence for flying fixed wing aircraft.

It was while working for a company in North Queensland that Tom started training to get his helicopter licence and flying a chopper to round up cattle. 

The brothers said Tom moved to the N.W.T. because he wanted to learn to fly bigger helicopters, and because he had a thirst for travel. 

"He's a bloody good operator," said Fergus. 

"That fact that it was just a mechanical failure which put the chopper down, yeah, it's pretty tough," said Oliver. "Doesn't make it any easier to know that, you know, it was no fault of Tom's."

Investigation report still to come

The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said in the days after Tom's death that a parts failure is what caused the crash. A tension torsion strap broke, causing the chopper's rotor blade to separate from the rotor head. Then the rotor head itself fell off. 

The chopper hit the ground and caught on fire. 

The TSB says it has 450 days to complete its investigation, which means it could be another two months before the board's report is released to the public. The investigation may shed more light on how or why the chopper part failed.

For the brothers in Australia, what happened will never make sense. 

Collin Pierrot, chief of the Fort Good Hope Dene band, has credited Tom for protecting the community's cultural camp from wildfire. Tom's brother Oliver feels that makes sense. 

"I guess for him to go out that way, it's fitting to the man that he was. Like he would do anything for anyone else," Oliver said.

Fergus and Oliver now aim to teach little George and Eli about their father's ways. Both men say they're looking forward to a visit from Julia and the boys to Australia, but that they plan to travel to Yellowknife and Fort Good Hope too. 

"It's our role just to try and pass on some of that stuff to his boys and, you know, the Aussie way. So they still have that Aussie influence in their life," said Oliver.