FORT SEVERN FIRST NATION, Ont. — Canadian Rangers rescued two stranded teenaged hunters and found a patient with mental health challenges in two successful search missions over the Civic Holiday weekend.
At Fort Severn, 850 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, a 14-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy got their all-terrain vehicles stuck in swampy terrain 100 kilometres from home while on a fishing and hunting trip.
There are polar bears along that part of the Hudson Bay coast.
Local police in Fort Severn asked OPP for help, but fog prevented the use of a police helicopter.
After OPP requested assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces, the army authorized the use of Canadian Rangers, who are part-time reservists.
Seargeant Christopher Koostachin and Ranger George Kakekaspan set on on ATVs in heavy fog, crossing four major tidal rivers to reach the area where the youths were marooned.
They followed the boys tracks to a vacant hunting cabin where they had sought shelter from overnight temperatures of only 4 C.
Koostachin said "We decided to let them continue next day with their hunting and they succeeded in carrying out their task of getting food for their families. We helped them out. They each got a caribou and fish to take with them when we escorted them home.”
At Nibinamik First Nation, 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, local Canadian Rangers were enlisted to search for a patient who had fled from the community health centre.
A Ranger who was among those assisting Nishnawbe Aski Police located the woman after a three-hour search, and she was escorted safely back to the health centre.
Sergeant John Meaker, the OPP's provincial search and rescue co-ordinator, said the two missions showed "once again the amazing resource the Canadian Rangers are to the OPP and to the province of Ontario. It is a great partnership and the Rangers do save lives."
