A brave group of students from Pontiac High School (PHS) spent two days last week voluntarily lowering themselves into ice cold waters to then be rescued by their peers, who themselves had just learned the needed techniques.
The students were participating in an ice rescue course, offered to the high school free of charge by Boreal River Rescue.
The course involved two morning sessions in the high school’s gym, where rescue techniques were practiced on dry ground, and then two afternoon sessions on Green Lake, where students, bundled in red neoprene suits, got to test their newly acquired skills in real scenarios, with all the proper safety measures in place.
The opportunity was organized by PHS outdoor education teacher Jordan Kent, who said Boreal River Rescue owner Danny Peled offered to do the course for free.
“The students in the Pontiac, they’re out on the ice in the winter time,” Kent said. “They’re snowmobiling, they’re cross-country skiing or skating, and so having a group of students with this kind of safety knowledge, awareness of the risks of being on the ice, and knowing what to do in an emergency is really important.”
Participants were a mix of students from Kent’s outdoor education program, as well as from the school’s new Firefighter 1 training program.
“And then there’s two or three that were just super keen and kept asking to join,” Kent said.
Peled, one of two instructors, said he was impressed with how much studying the students had done ahead of time to learn the theory behind general principles of safety, how ice forms, how hypothermia works, and the mechanics of some of the rescue techniques.
Once on the ice, students practiced all sorts of maneuvers, including self-rescues, rescuing each other with picks and without picks, and even taking a dip without the protective suit to experience how hard it is to catch their breath in ice water.
“One of our goals always is to help more people have positive experiences in the outdoors, so it just made a lot of sense,” Peled said. “In general a lot of the training in the outdoor industry is very privileged, so we love doing this stuff [to make it more accessible].”
Among the participants was Grade 10 student Emma Mathieu, not an outdoor ed or firefighter student, but who just wanted to learn the skills being offered.
“I wanted to do rescuing when I’m older, so I’m going to try to join the military and do rescuing,” she said of her interest in the course. She said she tried getting in the water on the first day, but once she felt some of the water slip into her suit, she decided she had had enough.
“I chickened out and I didn’t want to go in,” Mathieu laughed.
Ewan Smith, another among the participants, said he signed up because he saw it as a good opportunity to learn practical skills that would help him all winter long.
“I go up to my cottage a lot, and I’ve had a lot of friends who have fallen through and been in this kind of danger, so I want to kind of prevent that, and doing this course will help me I think,” Smith said. “I think this should help calm my nerves and help people if they do fall through.”
For Peled, teaching the course was also an opportunity to get to know the community where he and business partner Ty Smith have recently bought property.
Earlier this year, the pair purchased a portion of Esprit Rafting.
“We bought the land on Calumet Island, and the rafting operation, but not the company, and not the property in Fort-Coulonge,” Peled said.
“Now that we’re operating in this area, we want to be as involved as we can with the local community.”
