This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Off the east coast of mainland Canada is the island of Newfoundland.

The island is as far east as you can go and still be in Canada. So far east in fact that it has its own time zone,

a half an hour later than anywhere else in North America. If you've seen a photograph of the island,

it's probably the one that went viral last year of a small village on the eastern coast.

In the foreground are rolling hills in a couple of houses.

In the background, a gigantic iceberg floats by on the choppy blue sea.

Yeah, icebergs float by occasionally, but that one was actually scary big.

And nice pronunciation of Newfoundland, by the way.

A lot of people say Newfoundland, and it's a bit of a sore spot with us locals.

That is Newfoundland native native Luke Quinton.

And I want to take us to a different part of the island to a little town on the northeastern

side called Gander.

Now looking back, I was all of 20 years old at the time, though I thought I was ancient.

It's Christmas Eve, 1972, and Ian Blackmore is working.

My name is Ian Blackmore, and I was a photographer with Gander Beacon after I finished high school

and before I went to college in Toronto.

Ian's coworker Gerald Voke, was an editor on the same local paper.

He's going to help tell this story.

It was Christmas Eve and her mother was, you know, getting things ready for Santa Claus.

Gerald was home that day in 1972.

His family was getting ready for Christmas and he wanted to get his daughter out of the house

...