The last text message Clariss Moore received from her daughter before she boarded a plane in Ethiopia on Sunday said she had landed safely from her previous flight and would arrive in Kenya two-and-a-half hours later.
The plane, however, was only in the air for six minutes.
“Now I wish, and I know it’s so selfish, instead of texting, I called,” Clariss Moore told CTV News Toronto. “But I didn’t know it was the last one.”
Danielle Moore, 24, from Scarborough was travelling to Nairobi for the United Nations Environment Assembly when Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed minutes after taking off in Addis Ababa.
All 157 passengers and crew members aboard the plane were killed in the crash.
Clariss Moore said that her last real conversation with her daughter was on Friday.
“And I said,’ am I a bad mom, are we a good mom or good parents because you are going so far away. It seems like you don’t want to be around us.’ She said, ‘you know what mom? You are the best mom, and the best friend that I could ever have because you set us free to help others.”
Recounting the moment she received a phone call saying her daughter had died in the crash, Clariss Moore broke down in tears.
“My heart breaks,” she said. “My baby, she had so many plans.”
Danielle Moore’s family described her as someone who wanted to “save the world.”
After graduating from Dalhousie University in Halifax, she travelled across the country working with environmental groups and teaching underprivileged kids as part of Canada Learning Code. She spent time in British Columbia, Winnipeg, Iqaluit and some small communities in northern Ontario.
She was also set to start school in September at the University of Ottawa, with the goal of becoming a teacher.
“Recently, I’ve been calling her ‘Miss Incredible’ after seeing what she’s done,” her father, Chris Moore, said. “She’s touched many hearts, many lives in this world.”
“She has experienced more than me in my 55 years. And what can I say? We’ll miss her forever.”
Chris Moore said his daughter was a constant fact-checker that loved to teach, was passionate about the environment and always tried to find solutions to global problems.
“She was so passionate about learning,” he said. “She loved working with the students. She realized that she could do more good by planting seeds.”
The last time Danielle Moore’s parents saw her in person was two weeks earlier in Ottawa, when she was attending a seminar to prepare for her United Nations trip.
“That was a really nice weekend,” Chris Moore said. “We look back and we feel good because she was on a high.”
Danielle Moore’s partner David Lawless said that the she was a “magnanimous soul.” The couple met a year ago.
"She is someone who, when you meet her, you want to be the complimentary colour,” said Lawless.
“We organized projects in communities, whether it was around Indigenous reconciliation or cleaning plastics from the ocean. It was such an empowering feeling to do something so meaningful together.”
Lawless said that when he dropped Moore off at the airport in Ottawa for her trip, she was “so happy.”
“You can see it in her face.”
Gatherings will be taking place across the country on Thursday night in remembrance of Danielle Moore. Participants are encouraged to create a nature-based art tributes to her by the shore of a body of water.
“We are calling it a ritual," Danielle Moore’s younger brother, David said. " There are so many of them happening across Canada and people from other parts of the world doing this ritual to celebrate my sister and I think that is awesome."
“No matter where she was, from across Canada, across the world, she saw these communities where she could have a great place in and how she could influence so many friends and other people she didn’t even know”
The ritual in Toronto is set to take place in Inukhuk Park around 7 p.m.
Danielle was one of 18 Canadian citizens who were killed in the crash. The cause of the incident is still not known.
On Wednesday, Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced that the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts in Canada have been grounded as a precaution.
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Tracy Tong
