DeMarco, along with Roughriders teammates, Becket, Sturtridge, and Ray Syrnyk, were passengers on Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810 with another CFL player, Calvin Jones, of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.[1] All five players were present at the 1956 East–West All-Star game in Vancouver, British Columbia, and were headed back to their respective teams' home cities.[1] The five players were accompanied by 54 other passengers, and 3 crew members who all lost their lives in Western Canada's worst aviation disaster on December 9, 1956.[1] The crash is the subject of the 2012 documentary The Crash of Flight 810, part of TSN's Engraved on a Nation series of eight documentaries celebrating the 100th Grey Cup.[3][4]
^Andrikanich, Ryan. "Honoring a legend"Archived 2012-11-07 at the Wayback Machine, Daily Record (Morristown), December 9, 2006. Accessed July 19, 2011. "On this day 50 years ago, one of the worst commercial aviation disasters in Canadian history took the life of a promising young American football player who began his career as an offensive lineman for Boonton High School.... Mario DeMarco was born and raised in Boonton and played football for four years as a starting offensive lineman."
