A family's plan to visit their daughter over the Thanksgiving weekend turned tragic when the aircraft they were flying in crashed in a remote area of Algonquin Park, Ont., killing all four people onboard.

The deceased have been identified as pilot Kevin Houle, 50, his wife Lorraine, 50, and their daughter Emily, 17. Also deceased was Emily's boyfriend Michael Rollins, 17. All of them are from the Sudbury area.

The family had been in Kingston to visit with Emily's older sister, who is attending university classes in the city.

The plane left Kingston at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and had been scheduled to arrive in Sudbury at approximately 6:30 p.m. When it failed to arrive on time, waiting family members became concerned and called police, Dionne said.

The Ontario Provincial Police detachment in North Bay received word at 10:30 p.m. of an overdue plane and the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre initiated a search. The plane was found early this morning in a remote area of bush.

The cause of the crash isn't yet known and the bodies of the three passengers will be sent to the Opatovsky Funeral Home in Burks Falls for analysis, police say.

Meanwhile, the body of the pilot will be taken to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto for an autopsy, which is set for Monday.

According to Dionne, an OPP helicopter has been flying investigators, as well as officials with the Transportation Safety Board, in and out of the area.

She added that there were reports of rain and even ice in the area at the time of the crash. There is an airstrip nearby in South River, but investigators aren't sure if Houle was attempting to land there.

It appears that the aircraft, which is registered to Houle's mining business Tracks and Wheels, crash landed into a wooded area and hit a tree with such force that three bodies were ejected and a wing was snapped.

The chopper will search for any bush roads that would give investigators ground access to the crash site, Dionne said.

"Some of our emergency response officers were going to secure the scene and others who were going to look around to see if they could locate a road access," Dionne said.

"They know that they have bush roads back there, but where do they lead? So that's where the helicopter also comes in, to see if they can get close enough to the scene by a bush road."

According to Dionne, weather in North Bay, which is about an hour northwest of the crash site, was clear for much of Saturday. However winds did pick up and there was some rainfall later in the day.

The Transportation Safety Board is probing the cause of the crash, which may have been the result of bad weather.

TSB spokesman John Cottreau told The Canadian Press that the investigation will include checking the age and reliability of the plane in addition to the pilot's history.

"What we're going to be looking at is what are the causes and contributing factors, not only the apparent ones, but what are the underlying ones," Cottreau said.

"There's no simple answer," he said. "It all depends on how successful we are at getting at the information we need that helps us determine the causes and contributing factors."

By Sunday evening, a Facebook group dedicated to the teens had grown to more than 1,000 members.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, friend Kaylie Dudgeon said that the two teens had been dating for about a year.

Dudgeon added that she had been friends with Emily since Grade 3.

"I'm sure that when we go to school Tuesday it's gonna be devastating," Dudgeon said. "It's just gonna be weird to see her desk empty and not have her there."

With files from The Canadian Press