Speaker 1: If we don't get picked up by this helicopter, we
Speaker 1: probably will hit the other shoreline either at or shortly
Speaker 1: after dark. And then my concern is, am I even
Speaker 1: gonna be able to walk around to get firewood? Are
Speaker 1: my fingers gonna work for me to light that fire?
Speaker 2: This is the story of a near death experience of
Speaker 2: a game warden in northern Canada. It's kind of weird
Speaker 2: to me how humans are so attracted to these near
Speaker 2: death stories. I know that, I sure am, and I
Speaker 2: think it's a primitive built into our DNA thing because
Speaker 2: these stories are loaded with payoff, they teach us how
Speaker 2: to survive, and are simply entertaining stories, and both of
Speaker 2: these things are connected. On this episode, you're gonna learn
Speaker 2: a new way to die, which also might teach you
Speaker 2: a new way to survive. Cold water is a deadly killer.
Speaker 2: I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 2: And hey, don't forget about our new Bear Grease YouTube
Speaker 2: channel and Instagram page Bear John and I've got videos
Speaker 2: coming out every Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the support.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukeom and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Brought to you by to Covi's Boots. I'm a cowboy
Speaker 2: boot man and I've been wearing to Covis for years.
Speaker 2: They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good
Speaker 2: boots for good times.
Speaker 1: We're making our way up through the river. Eventually we
Speaker 1: get to the lake right around It was in the evening,
Speaker 1: around six o'clock, and you sort of play it that way,
Speaker 1: thinking that, Okay, if guys are going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: coming up to the camp throughout the day, they'll probably,
Speaker 1: you know, either like a lot of guys. I should
Speaker 1: also say, like the ice has only been off the
Speaker 1: lake for I think two or three days at this point,
Speaker 1: this is late May. We get out of the lake.
Speaker 1: We don't hear anything, we don't see anything. We kind
Speaker 1: of putter down to one end of the lake. We
Speaker 1: can't see, you know, anybody in the camps. It just
Speaker 1: looks like it's it's empty. There's nobody around. So we
Speaker 1: get out, grab a snack, stretch our legs a little bit,
Speaker 1: get back in the boat, start puttering our way back
Speaker 1: and it wasn't windy, but there was, you know, a
Speaker 1: bit of a wind, I will say. And we're driving
Speaker 1: along and I don't really I don't think either of
Speaker 1: us really know what happens or what happened. But I
Speaker 1: was peeling a banana in the front of the boat.
Speaker 3: That's why I remember.
Speaker 1: I'm peeling the banana, and the next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I just feel the boat. It kind of you know,
Speaker 1: like if you're going along to have a small wave
Speaker 1: kind of hit you sideways, you just kind of roll
Speaker 1: over that almost ladder, if that makes sense. So we
Speaker 1: feel that that wind, that little wave, it just kind
Speaker 1: of rocks the boat one way, and then the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, we're upside down.
Speaker 2: The table for crisis has been set, icy water and
Speaker 2: a flipped boat in a remote location. We'll start to
Speaker 2: move backwards from here.
Speaker 3: My name is Rob Argue.
Speaker 1: I'm a retired conservation officer from the Province of Ontario
Speaker 1: in Canada, and I'm now the owner and operator of
Speaker 1: Eastern Canadian Outfitters, where we have three hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: lodges in Ontario and Quebec.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, a hunted bear with Rob at his
Speaker 2: place in Quebec, and I've never forgotten a story that
Speaker 2: he told me. I think I remember it because it
Speaker 2: touches on one of my core fears, big water. You
Speaker 2: may have heard me talk about it, but my only
Speaker 2: legit near death experience that I've had thus far in
Speaker 2: my life was a close call in fast water in
Speaker 2: wash it Tall Mountain Stream when I was nineteen. Rob
Speaker 2: has a story about not just water, but cold water,
Speaker 2: icy water, which is as deadly as any bullet bomb
Speaker 2: or disease. Our bodies just starting equipped to take much
Speaker 2: of it. Rob was a conservation officer, or what we'd
Speaker 2: call down here a game warden, and he was stationed
Speaker 2: in a remote community in northern Ontario called Cappus Casing.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask him how he got into being
Speaker 2: a game.
Speaker 1: Warden basically, I mean, I started out being a conservation
Speaker 1: officer a game warden in the late nineties. That's when
Speaker 1: I got on full time, was January of ninety nine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as a young officer in a northern community
Speaker 1: like that, I mean it was it was kind of neat.
Speaker 1: I equate it to being like a you know, the
Speaker 1: sheriff of a small town. Everybody knew, you know, who
Speaker 1: you were. It was neat and that you made contacts
Speaker 1: and relationships with sort of key people in the community
Speaker 1: and it was nice to you know, you'd start to
Speaker 1: build trust with those people and then they would give
Speaker 1: you in for me, which made your job easier just
Speaker 1: of you know where to look and who you were
Speaker 1: sort of keeping an eye on and what was going on.
Speaker 1: So it was a great, great place to start being.
Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't say a city kid, but I
Speaker 1: mean I was born and raised in Ottawa, which is
Speaker 1: the capital of Canada, so I was in a very
Speaker 1: suburban environment growing up. Then in high school we moved
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes out of the city, so it
Speaker 1: was in a small town carl Carlton Place, and it
Speaker 1: was like going back in time. Basically everybody hunted and
Speaker 1: fished there. The high school. You know, there would never
Speaker 1: be a test during the first two weeks of November
Speaker 1: because i was the deer season and there were just
Speaker 1: no boys in school during those those two weeks of November.
Speaker 1: So it was a bit of a culture shock going
Speaker 1: from the city out to the country. But that's where
Speaker 1: you know, the hunting and fishing bug kind of really bit.
Speaker 2: Rob's story of deer days in school makes me see
Speaker 2: that rural North America, even if it's in Canada, isn't
Speaker 2: much different anywhere. We're kind of all the same. The
Speaker 2: context of Rob's story happens while he was a game warden,
Speaker 2: but the second part of the context was that it
Speaker 2: took place in deep Canadian wilderness, which is no joke.
Speaker 2: When I first started traveling in Canada, I quickly realized
Speaker 2: the vast amount of uninhabited wild places that they have
Speaker 2: as far superior in terms of absence of people in
Speaker 2: roads than anything that we.
Speaker 3: Have in the lower forty eight.
Speaker 2: A good place to start this story is to try
Speaker 2: to get a grasp of Canadian wilderness.
Speaker 1: So to give you an idea of the expanse of
Speaker 1: sort of, I'll say northern Canada, and it doesn't even
Speaker 1: have to be that far north. But basically, you know
Speaker 1: where I live in Ottawa. It's the capital city of Canada.
Speaker 1: There's a million people here, which is not a big city.
Speaker 1: But if you drive say forty five minutes to an
Speaker 1: hour outside of the city, you have Deer, Moose Bear,
Speaker 1: you have some small towns, but you're kind of in
Speaker 1: the on the border, the middle of nowhere, and even
Speaker 1: beyond that, Like if you think of the province of Quebec,
Speaker 1: for example, the northern.
Speaker 3: Tip of Quebec is the Arctic.
Speaker 1: There's polar bears, there's walrus, there's you know, seals, there's caribou.
Speaker 1: The eastern corner of the same province in Quebec is
Speaker 1: the ocean, so you have you.
Speaker 3: Know, the.
Speaker 1: Saint Lawrence River, the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River
Speaker 1: where you have whales and you know seafood, so you
Speaker 1: have that maritime environment. If you look at the reflection
Speaker 1: of the wildlife that's present and the different species, it
Speaker 1: just gives you an idea of the different environments and
Speaker 1: how much that one province, you know, spreads from one corner,
Speaker 1: which is the Atlantic Ocean basically to the Arctic Ocean,
Speaker 1: and then in the southwest you know the Great Lakes region.
Speaker 3: So these are big, big areas.
Speaker 1: Canada's population, i think right now is around forty million,
Speaker 1: so it's about a tenth of what it is in
Speaker 1: the States. So we have just massive, massive tracts of
Speaker 1: land that there's nobody around.
Speaker 2: Roughly one point five million square miles of Canada. Nearly
Speaker 2: forty percent of the country's land mass is considered largely
Speaker 2: wild and remote, characterized by minimal human impact and sparse
Speaker 2: infrastructure in low road density. Much of this is boreal
Speaker 2: forest and Arctic tundra. Over eighty percent of Canada's land
Speaker 2: masks is public land or what they call crown land,
Speaker 2: while roughly twenty eight percent of America's land mass is
Speaker 2: publicly owned. But it's kind of deceptive because a large
Speaker 2: percentage of that roadless big public land is in Alaska.
Speaker 2: About sixty five percent of Canada exists in large roadless tracts,
Speaker 2: reflecting its vast, sparsely penetrated interior. Point being, Canada has
Speaker 2: some seriously wild places. Big backcountry is the context of
Speaker 2: Rob's story, and it involves some walleye poachers or potential
Speaker 2: walleye poachers. Let's get into the story and if why
Speaker 2: Canadians call the backcountry or backwoods the bush?
Speaker 1: So? I mean, one of the first things I should
Speaker 1: say is when I was in Kappuskasing, I started with
Speaker 1: another new officers name was Greg Clark, super guy. He
Speaker 1: was a couple of years older than me, had a
Speaker 1: you know, he started at the same time as I
Speaker 1: did as a conservation officer full time, but he had
Speaker 1: been a deputy a little bit longer than me. He
Speaker 1: was from northwestern Ontario, you know, born and raised in
Speaker 1: the bush. Great with everything, snow machines, boating, you know,
Speaker 1: he was just he was a bush guy. So it
Speaker 1: was again just what a great way to start my
Speaker 1: career with this other guy. And we got along anyway.
Speaker 1: It was just a fantastic relationship and a great partner.
Speaker 1: So as I mentioned, you know earlier, is you know,
Speaker 1: we had heard that there were people that were always
Speaker 1: fishing every year the day before the walleye season opened
Speaker 1: on a certain lake in the southern end of our district.
Speaker 1: So this was a remote lake, hard to get into,
Speaker 1: and cap Skasing is a pretty it's kind of a
Speaker 1: swampy area, so a lot of guys up there had argos.
Speaker 3: You'd have you know, ATVs with big mud tires.
Speaker 1: But our goo were pretty popular at the time, just
Speaker 1: because it was so wet. So a lot of these lakes,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be in your argo for an
Speaker 1: hour or two hours from where you park your vehicle
Speaker 1: to get back into your camp that's on a certain lake,
Speaker 1: so so we were trying to figure out of you know,
Speaker 1: the big problem with a lot of these spots is
Speaker 1: you just you can't get in there without everybody else
Speaker 1: knowing that you're either coming or that you're in or whatever.
Speaker 1: So there was a river that flowed in from another
Speaker 1: you know, remote location, so we had to It was
Speaker 1: a lot of work to get into where we were,
Speaker 1: so we're kind of limited in what we could take.
Speaker 1: So we basically brought a square stern canoe and there
Speaker 1: were a couple of sets of rapids that we knew
Speaker 1: we had to get through to get up into the lake.
Speaker 1: So we ended up I chucked because we put like
Speaker 1: a fifteen horse outboard motor on this canoe. You know,
Speaker 1: that's basically what we needed to get up. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, safety wise, you know, maybe that was
Speaker 1: a touch over powered for the canoe kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but whatever. So I always always, and I still to
Speaker 1: this day, you know, a pack with me that has
Speaker 1: a first aid kid survival kit, especially in those northern environments,
Speaker 1: right because if something goes wrong, you may be there
Speaker 1: for a day or at least overnight before somebody can
Speaker 1: get to you. So the M and R provided M
Speaker 1: and R Ministry and not resources. They provide us each
Speaker 1: with a personal locator beacon and then we kind of
Speaker 1: made our own survival kits. You know, I had my backpack.
Speaker 3: With my gear. We loaded the canoe.
Speaker 1: We were doing what was called plane clothes patrol, so
Speaker 1: that meant that, you know, we were dressed. We weren't
Speaker 1: in uniform, but we still had our gun belts on.
Speaker 1: We sort of had all of our tools with us,
Speaker 1: our ticket books, you know, binoculars, cameras, all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So we loaded up the canoe and I
Speaker 1: don't remember how long, but it was certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a couple of hours. I can say probably
Speaker 1: about two hours to kind of because again you couldn't
Speaker 1: go too fast up this this river. It was again
Speaker 1: there was good current and everything else, so we kind
Speaker 1: of just putted our way up the river.
Speaker 3: It was beautiful.
Speaker 1: All I could think about, you know, being sort of
Speaker 1: this new Hunters, like I'm want to come back here
Speaker 1: in Mussan because it just it looked like I was,
Speaker 1: you know, on a TV show in the Yukon or
Speaker 1: something like that. It was gorgeous area and again nobody
Speaker 1: else around. So we're making our way up through up
Speaker 1: through the river. Eventually we get to the lake right
Speaker 1: around It was in the evening, around six o'clock, and
Speaker 1: we'd sort of planned it that way, thinking that, Okay,
Speaker 1: if guys are going to be, you know, coming up
Speaker 1: to the camp throughout the day, they'll probably you know,
Speaker 1: eater like.
Speaker 3: A lot of guys.
Speaker 1: I should also say, like, the ice has only been
Speaker 1: off the lake for I think two or three days
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 3: This is late.
Speaker 1: May, so depending on the year, sometimes sometimes walleye season
Speaker 1: opened up there and there was still ice on the lake,
Speaker 1: normally not enough to ice fish. But anyway, it was
Speaker 1: right around that time when the lakes were thawing that
Speaker 1: the walleye season would open. So we get onto the lake.
Speaker 1: We don't hear anything, we don't see anything. We kind
Speaker 1: of putter down to one end of the lake. We
Speaker 1: can't see, you know, anybody in the camps. It just
Speaker 1: looks like it's it's empty. There's nobody around.
Speaker 3: So we turn the boat around.
Speaker 1: I think we got out at one point actually because
Speaker 1: we switched spots where I had driven up and Greg
Speaker 1: was going to drive us out, and so we get out,
Speaker 1: grab a snack, stretch our legs a little bit, get
Speaker 1: back in the boat, start puttering our way back. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't windy, but there was, you know, a bit
Speaker 1: of a wind, I will say. And we're driving along
Speaker 1: and I don't really I don't think either of us
Speaker 1: really know what happens or what happened. But I was
Speaker 1: peeling a banana in the front of the boat. That's
Speaker 1: where I remember. I'm peeling the banana and the next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I just feel the boat. It kind
Speaker 1: of you know, like if you're going along you have
Speaker 1: a small wave kind of hits you sideways, you just
Speaker 1: kind of roll over that almost laterally, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So we feel that that wind, that little wave, it
Speaker 1: just kind of rocks the boat one way, and then
Speaker 1: the next thing, you know, we're upside down. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm peeling this banana one second and then I just
Speaker 1: just like this little swoop and then I'm underwater.
Speaker 2: Everything is perfect until it's not. This is usually the
Speaker 2: context for bad things happening. And don't forget about that banana,
Speaker 2: because I garand dog te you we will be back
Speaker 2: for that. But usually disaster is quick and unexpected. However,
Speaker 2: they were on a remote ice cold leg, so they
Speaker 2: knew there was just a razor thin layer between them
Speaker 2: and extreme danger. But let's dwell on that thin edge
Speaker 2: for just a minute. I think about that thin edge
Speaker 2: when I ride a mule. Things can go wrong like
Speaker 2: so quick. I think about it. When I drive a car,
Speaker 2: things can go wrong quick. And you should think about
Speaker 2: this when you're in cold water. These guys all of
Speaker 2: a sudden found themselves in a life threatening situation. But no, biggie, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, they've got a lot of options, or do they?
Speaker 1: So? As I mentioned, you know, we're still wearing our
Speaker 1: I call them duty boots or whatever, but you know
Speaker 1: they're like fairly black hea boots were wearing a gun
Speaker 1: belt back in the day. Of course, everybody, that's cool.
Speaker 1: You're not wearing a life jacket. You're sitting on it
Speaker 1: because it's a seat. So neither of us were wearing
Speaker 1: life jackets, which was really dumb. And it's funny because underwater,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing what sort of comes to you and
Speaker 1: how quickly things come to you. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: before I knew what a conservation officer was, I always
Speaker 1: wanted to be a fighter pilot, So you know, I
Speaker 1: knew everything about we had f eighteens up here cfaighteens.
Speaker 1: I knew all the stats on cfaighteens. I was watching
Speaker 1: videos all the time as a young guy, and one
Speaker 1: of the videos I remember seeing was it was a
Speaker 1: US Navy video where you would see the pilot in
Speaker 1: like a fake cockpit coming down into a pool. So
Speaker 1: I think it was for like whatever fourteens or something,
Speaker 1: but it was a training video of what you do
Speaker 1: if you hit the water and you're kind of you know,
Speaker 1: you'd lose your whereabouts. And what I remember is you
Speaker 1: blow a bubble. So when you blow a bubble, automatically,
Speaker 1: the bubble goes up, and that tells you which way
Speaker 1: to swim because you're upside down or twisted around and
Speaker 1: you start swimming. You may be swimming down, you may
Speaker 1: be swimming sideways. You don't know. So that that came
Speaker 1: to me in my head. So I blow the little bubble.
Speaker 1: I see which way is up. So I and then
Speaker 1: again in my head, I'm like, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sink like a rock wearing you know, the gun
Speaker 1: belt and everything else. So I just start swimming up.
Speaker 1: And you know, I wasn't that deep. I was probably
Speaker 1: only a couple feet under the water, but you don't
Speaker 1: realize it at the time. So I actually came up
Speaker 1: underneath the canoe, and so I sort of put my
Speaker 1: hands on the canoe, you know, take a breath, and
Speaker 1: that's when it hits you of how cold that stupid
Speaker 1: water is. Like I say, I think the ice had
Speaker 1: been off the lake for two maybe three days. So
Speaker 1: then the next thought is, okay, where's Greg. So you know,
Speaker 1: I kind of pull the canoe over my head or
Speaker 1: I get out from under the canoe.
Speaker 3: I look around. I see Greg's you know.
Speaker 1: Off whatever I'm gonna say, five yards maybe off the
Speaker 1: back of the boat. And of course, like you're hearing
Speaker 1: different videos or whatever, he had hit his head as
Speaker 1: part of his kind of process going down, so you
Speaker 1: know he was. He was okay, but still a little
Speaker 1: I don't want to say groggy, I think just disoriented,
Speaker 1: maybe like you don't both wear in the water.
Speaker 3: But yeah, anyway, we you know, I get him to
Speaker 3: the boat.
Speaker 1: We kind of take a second to take it all in,
Speaker 1: just realize the situation we're in, which isn't good.
Speaker 3: You know, it's cold water, the boat's flipped over.
Speaker 2: How far are you from the bank?
Speaker 3: Exactly, great question, Not that far.
Speaker 1: I would say we were probably, oh, one hundred yards
Speaker 1: at the most. Probably like eighty yards would be my guess.
Speaker 2: So, Robin Gregg, are less than one hundred yards from
Speaker 2: the bank. That doesn't seem like very far. If someone
Speaker 2: put a gun to your head right now and asks
Speaker 2: you if you believe that you could swim to the
Speaker 2: shore with a life jacket on in thirty five degree water,
Speaker 2: what would you say? If you're with somebody right now
Speaker 2: riding the in a truck, or with your why or
Speaker 2: your kids, ask them if they think that they could
Speaker 2: do it, say yes or no. When in cold water, though,
Speaker 2: you typically have about ten minutes of fairly normal mobility
Speaker 2: before you start to seize up.
Speaker 3: The tick and clock has started for Rob.
Speaker 2: Let's see what Rob says.
Speaker 1: The first thing we're doing is we're going, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's try to, you know, get the boat flipped over
Speaker 1: and we'll see if we can get back in the boat.
Speaker 1: And as we're doing this, you know I talked earlier
Speaker 1: about having a backpack with different equipment. Some of the
Speaker 1: equipment then starts kind of popping up from underneath I
Speaker 1: see my backpack pop up. So I think the first
Speaker 1: thing I did was I went back underneath the boat
Speaker 1: because I wanted to try to find life jackets. Right
Speaker 1: our two life jackets. So I found one life jacket.
Speaker 1: I put that on. Then I swam again, not far
Speaker 1: a couple feet to grab that backpack. And then we
Speaker 1: tried correcting the a couple of times, and we we
Speaker 1: just we couldn't do it. I mean a it was
Speaker 1: a combination of the cold water. It's amazing how fast
Speaker 1: you just you can't move. It's like your muscle sees
Speaker 1: up you're breathing, really constricts on you. So then my
Speaker 1: next thought is, okay, I have this life jacket on.
Speaker 1: You know, Greg's holding on.
Speaker 3: To the back of the boat.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole key in cold waters just get
Speaker 1: as much of your body up out of the water
Speaker 1: as possible. So at that point, you know, Greg was
Speaker 1: pretty much I would say, other than maybe his legs
Speaker 1: in the water, like his chest and upper body was
Speaker 1: up over the back of the canoe, you know. And
Speaker 1: I I was a very strong swimmer. I used to
Speaker 1: love swimming all that good stuff. I said, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I have my life jacket on, I'm going to swim
Speaker 1: to the shore because there were camps right across from
Speaker 1: where we were, So I'm gonna swim to the shore.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna grab you know, another boat. If I have
Speaker 1: to break in somewhere, I'll break into a shed or
Speaker 1: grab a canoe, whatever, and then I'll come back out
Speaker 1: and pick them up.
Speaker 3: Okay, good plan.
Speaker 1: So I start swimming to shore, and like I say,
Speaker 1: at that point, I you know, when I say eighty yards,
Speaker 1: As I'm thinking back, I don't even think it was
Speaker 1: that far. Like I think it was more like, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty yards. But I start swimming and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: on my back just trying to sort of, I don't know,
Speaker 1: kick and push water. But because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: expend a whole lot of energy. It's not like I
Speaker 1: was going to do a breaststroke or overhead or whatever.
Speaker 1: But every sort of every time I would exhale, I
Speaker 1: could inhale less. And it was just it was like
Speaker 1: a ball constructor on my chest. And it didn't take
Speaker 1: me very long at all. I went maybe ten yards
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, I can't do this now. Whether
Speaker 1: I could have kept going or whether that was more
Speaker 1: of a mental panic thing. I don't know, wow, but
Speaker 1: I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to breathe soon. So anyway, I went back to
Speaker 1: the boat. I'm like, you know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to tell you, but we're kind of stuck here.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about, like how close you were
Speaker 2: to the shore. I think most people, including me, who
Speaker 2: wouldn't have the experience of being plunged into water that
Speaker 2: is just above freezing.
Speaker 3: Just how difficult it would be.
Speaker 2: You would think that, oh, he's eighty yards from shore,
Speaker 2: this young fit guy, he's gonna easily swim to the shore.
Speaker 2: And then you're just contending against he's he's also now
Speaker 2: you know, cold and wet, but he's on shore. He
Speaker 2: could build a fire.
Speaker 3: He'll be able to walk.
Speaker 2: And move and and and and you know, save himself
Speaker 2: from hypothermia. But I mean, you're telling me that the
Speaker 2: water is just crippling when it's that cold it is
Speaker 2: and you just can't you just can't navigate through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're one hundred percent rate in that. A
Speaker 1: lot of this was it was just it was a
Speaker 1: super emotional roller coaster because you know, you're.
Speaker 3: Right when I when I.
Speaker 1: Did the first attempt to swim to shore, you know,
Speaker 1: when I left that boat, I'm like, yeah, okay, well
Speaker 1: that's that's just what I'm going to do. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: I was a super sman, strong swimmer. I was in
Speaker 1: good shape. I was even wearing a life jacket. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, even if I have to stop and take
Speaker 1: a break, okay, I'll take a break.
Speaker 3: But I had.
Speaker 1: No idea, or I would never have thought that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to swim that distance to get to shore.
Speaker 1: And at that point, you know, I wasn't so concerned
Speaker 1: with mobility once I hit shore, I think because it
Speaker 1: was still you know, it was very early on. We'd
Speaker 1: probably only been in the water, like i'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: maybe five to ten minutes at that point. Like that
Speaker 1: was that was the first thing that came to mind.
Speaker 1: That was the easy answers. Okay, it's it's right there,
Speaker 1: the cabins are right there. I'm just gonna swim there.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't even thinking of you know, plan B,
Speaker 1: C or D down the road. That was that was
Speaker 1: just what I was going to do, and that's how
Speaker 1: we were going to get out.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's the it how fast like it was.
Speaker 1: Literally I'm gonna say, you know, five strokes away from
Speaker 1: the boat, maybe five you know yards from the boat,
Speaker 1: and that's where I'm like, I can't do this.
Speaker 3: There's there's no way I'm going to be able to
Speaker 3: get over.
Speaker 2: I appreciate Rob's honesty about not being able to swim
Speaker 2: the shore, it just seems so close. But if he
Speaker 2: couldn't do it, I have no reason to think that
Speaker 2: I could have done it. I didn't grow up boating
Speaker 2: on big cold water, but have spent some time in
Speaker 2: my adult life in some big cold Canadian and Alaskan water. Once,
Speaker 2: while I was with Steve Ranella up in Alaska, we
Speaker 2: were less than a half mile off the shore in
Speaker 2: probably forty degree water, forty degree air temperature, something like that,
Speaker 2: and I asked him, I said, Steve, if we sank
Speaker 2: this boat right now, could we swim to shore? And
Speaker 2: he casually and without hesitation, said no. And I said,
Speaker 2: so we just die. If this boat sinks, we die,
Speaker 2: and he was just like, yep. And it was then
Speaker 2: that had occurred to me just how risky it is
Speaker 2: to be on a boat in cold water. Juju Newcomb
Speaker 2: should have warned me about this.
Speaker 1: So then the next step, and it's in a way
Speaker 1: part of I think is maybe a bit of an
Speaker 1: embarrassment factor, or maybe it's you know, you're just trying
Speaker 1: to grapple with the reality of the situation you're in.
Speaker 1: So I had that personal locator beacon in my backpack
Speaker 1: that came up. Another thing that was in that backpack
Speaker 1: that we'll come back to later that was super important
Speaker 1: is I had an airhorn. So I got the PLB,
Speaker 1: I turned it on and so what that does is
Speaker 1: that sends a signal to a satellite and then the
Speaker 1: satellite relays it back to I believe in Ontario, I
Speaker 1: think it's the opp Ontario Provincial Police, so it'd be
Speaker 1: like our state troopers kind of thing. And I think
Speaker 1: they're responsible for like search and rescue activities in the province.
Speaker 3: And we were.
Speaker 1: You know, I keep thinking of things in the term
Speaker 1: of like helicopter distances, right, and we had a big
Speaker 1: forest fire fighting center in the city of Timmins, and
Speaker 1: Timmins would be helicopter flight wise probably about forty five
Speaker 1: minutes from the lake where we were, So you know,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, Okay, this is cool. We just got
Speaker 1: to hang on for about you know, forty five minutes
Speaker 1: and we'll hear a helicopter come in and they'll scoop
Speaker 1: us up and we'll be all good. As I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: this was around six six thirty at night in late May,
Speaker 1: so I think it gets dark. I don't know, a
Speaker 1: thirty maybe nine at the latest kind of thing. Probably
Speaker 1: that's probably about probably about nine o'clock at night. So
Speaker 1: you know, we just decided, okay, we're just going to
Speaker 1: have to sit it out, and we're waiting for for
Speaker 1: a helicopter to come that I'm thinking shouldn't take very long.
Speaker 1: So at this point, you know, Greg's kind of the
Speaker 1: same thing. On the back, I actually get up to
Speaker 1: the front of the boat, the bow of the canoe,
Speaker 1: and I'm straddling it, so I'm sitting on it like
Speaker 1: I'm riding a horse. And what I'm doing is that
Speaker 1: with you know, with my legs, I'm trying to keep it.
Speaker 1: It's still a very tippy canoe, so I'm trying to
Speaker 1: kind of keep the canoe balanced and stable so that
Speaker 1: both myself and Greg are you know, up out of
Speaker 1: the water as much as possible. But every once in
Speaker 1: a while, we'd get just a little gust of wind
Speaker 1: or a wave or whatever, and you know, boom, we
Speaker 1: both go back in. And it was so frustrating because
Speaker 1: you know, you you'd feel your the basically your skin
Speaker 1: temperature warming up after you're up out of the water
Speaker 1: for a little while, and then you get dunked in
Speaker 1: and you just feel that cold water, you know, wash
Speaker 1: away all the warmth and then you're back down to
Speaker 1: freezing cold again. So sort of just frustrating is the
Speaker 1: wind is then slowly blowing us away from that shore
Speaker 1: across the lake and it's not a huge lake, but
Speaker 1: you just feel really helpless. You're like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: just in a waiting game, right, So we just you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking to each other kind of trying to keep
Speaker 1: spirits up, keep optimists, you know, yeah, optimistic that either
Speaker 1: the helicopter is gonna come. And then you know, in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind or our mind, we're both
Speaker 1: you know, realizing that it is still the day before
Speaker 1: fishing season, and if we've had these complaints of guys
Speaker 1: coming in the day before, there should be people coming in,
Speaker 1: you know, to these camps the night before in order
Speaker 1: to be there for the following day.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this, what was the confirmation that
Speaker 2: you're beaking had sent the distress message. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is not a text message machine. No, obviously that you
Speaker 2: could like tell them exactly what was going on. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: is it just assumed that if you hit that button,
Speaker 2: they're coming for you?
Speaker 1: All your right, all your faith is in a little
Speaker 1: red flashing light. It's like, you know, you know that
Speaker 1: it's on and it's sending a signal, but that's all,
Speaker 1: you know. I when I really started getting worried was
Speaker 1: after that forty five minute, one hour, hour and a
Speaker 1: half market. I hadn't heard that helicopter. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: is going on? Like, it shouldn't be taking this long.
Speaker 2: That's got to be a spooky, lonely feeling when no
Speaker 2: one comes, especially when you know that your life has
Speaker 2: a time stamp on it that's not years or days,
Speaker 2: but is hours and minutes long. And that brings up
Speaker 2: a great question, how long can these guys last? That's
Speaker 2: a good question to ask yourself right now. How long
Speaker 2: do you think a human would last in these conditions?
Speaker 2: Within assumed air temperature in the forties and we know
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of win. Make your guess how
Speaker 2: long could they last? What was your understanding of hypothermia
Speaker 2: at that time? I mean, obviously, I know you would
Speaker 2: have known that's what you were fighting against, But did
Speaker 2: you know the signs of hypothermia? Was that something that
Speaker 2: you were fighting against? I mean, like thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think most people have a basic understanding of hypothermia,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: How you get it, how to treat it.
Speaker 1: But that was absolutely our number one challenge that we
Speaker 1: knew we were going to have to sort of deal with.
Speaker 1: And like I say, goes back to sort of that
Speaker 1: the mental game of you know, frustration, trying to stay
Speaker 1: positive because every time that you know, we've rolled off
Speaker 1: that boat, you know, you know in your mind what
Speaker 1: that's doing.
Speaker 3: To you physically, and it's it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's not what you want, right, Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I think there was, Yeah, there were things
Speaker 1: that we were lucky, you know, the weather, and again
Speaker 1: there's lots of things you'll never forget.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, it was a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful, blue skied, gorgeous day out in
Speaker 1: the woods, and I remember sitting on top of that
Speaker 1: boat and especially you know, the farther we drifted across.
Speaker 1: You're just watching the shoreline, and the cottages get farther
Speaker 1: and farther away, and you're like, oh man, so then
Speaker 1: you know then it's it's not I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 1: starting to get dark, but you know it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: coming soon.
Speaker 3: And you know that.
Speaker 1: The next plan was it's like, okay, well, the way
Speaker 1: the wind's going, if we don't get picked up by
Speaker 1: this helicopter, we probably will hit the other shoreline, you know,
Speaker 1: either at or shortly after dark. Okay, And then my
Speaker 1: concern is it's exactly what you said. Am I even
Speaker 1: going to be able to walk around to get firewood?
Speaker 1: Are my fingers gonna work for me to, you know,
Speaker 1: light that fire.
Speaker 2: Think of hapithermia as your body's battery saber mode gone haywire.
Speaker 2: It's a progressive slowing down that often robs you of
Speaker 2: the wits that you need to save yourself. It usually
Speaker 2: begins with stumbling, mumbling, and fumbling as your motor skills
Speaker 2: and personality start to fray.
Speaker 3: At the edges.
Speaker 2: You'll transition from violent, uncontrollable shivering, which is your body's
Speaker 2: last ditch effort to friction heat itself to this deceptive
Speaker 2: eerie stillness as your core temperature drops below ninety degrees
Speaker 2: fahrenheit and the shivering stops entirely. This is the danger
Speaker 2: zone where victims may become confused, lethargic, or even experience
Speaker 2: paradoxical undressing, a phenomenon where the brain in a state
Speaker 2: of terminal haywire suddenly fells scorching hot and prompts the
Speaker 2: person to strip off their clothes and freeze and tempts.
Speaker 2: This is also where people experience terminal burrowing, where you
Speaker 2: feel the need to dig a hole and climb in it.
Speaker 2: If you are cold and you feel that sensation, you
Speaker 2: gotta know you're in bad trouble and you better do
Speaker 2: something different. But after that, finally the heart rate starts
Speaker 2: to slow, the skin becomes blue and cold to the touch,
Speaker 2: and the person may even appear dead even while they're alive.
Speaker 2: Here's some key stages to watch for in hypothermia. Mild
Speaker 2: hypothermia is shivering like having goosebumps and numb hands. The
Speaker 2: brain is still sharp, but the body is signaling for help.
Speaker 2: Moderate hypothermia is the shivering becomes violent. Coordination fails like
Speaker 2: you can't zip a jacket, you have slurred speech and
Speaker 2: kind of get this glassed overlook. Severe hypothermia is when
Speaker 2: the shivering stops. The person may become non responsive, irrational,
Speaker 2: they may pass out. The pulse becomes weak and irregular.
Speaker 2: Here's more from Rob.
Speaker 1: We, like I say, we went in. I think it
Speaker 1: was shortly after six, and then I want to say,
Speaker 1: it gets dark around nine. I'm gonna see I think
Speaker 1: it was around eight or eight thirty that in the
Speaker 1: distance we hear a couple of ATVs coming. So I
Speaker 1: had said earlier that, you know, we we were hoping
Speaker 1: that maybe somebody would come into their camp, and sure
Speaker 1: enough they did. So we heard the ATVs. And I
Speaker 1: mentioned again earlier that in my pack with the survival
Speaker 1: kid all that stuff, I had the PLB that was
Speaker 1: up and running, and I also had an air horn.
Speaker 1: So a couple of times earlier, I think twice earlier,
Speaker 1: i'd kind of done the like the SOS signal on
Speaker 1: the air horn. No answer anyway, So we heard these ATVs,
Speaker 1: you know, really clearly came into one of the camps
Speaker 1: that were on the north side of the lake, which
Speaker 1: was the you know, the decide that we're now drifting
Speaker 1: away from where we initially went in, sort of pretty
Speaker 1: close to there. Yeah, it was I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: when you hear the ATVs, it's just, you.
Speaker 3: Know, literally it's like, thank god.
Speaker 1: We you know, we were you're hoping that someone's going
Speaker 1: to come into their camp. We we knew that historically
Speaker 1: people were coming into their camps the night before, so
Speaker 1: you know, we had just there were a couple of
Speaker 1: you know, we had a couple of hopes the first
Speaker 1: and it was it was also one of my real
Speaker 1: frustrations after it all.
Speaker 3: I really really thought that we.
Speaker 1: Were gonna have an minar helicopter show up about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, you know after we went in, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't understand why that wasn't happening. But then, yeah,
Speaker 1: when we did hear the ATVs, it's like, you know, A,
Speaker 1: it's thank goodness. B it's you know, please let them
Speaker 1: hear this air horn. You know, they're not gonna hear
Speaker 1: it while the ATV's are running, and if you know,
Speaker 1: if they go from a running ATV directly into their camp,
Speaker 1: they're maybe not going to hear anything. Is there even
Speaker 1: enough air still in the air horn to signal that
Speaker 1: they're gonna hear. So, yeah, it's it's emotionally so it's
Speaker 1: it's exciting, it's rewarding. At the same time, there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety of you know, am I even
Speaker 1: going to be able to signal these people in a
Speaker 1: way that they're gonna be able to hear us? Are
Speaker 1: they even equipped to come out and get us? You know,
Speaker 1: I mean this was the first trip in to a
Speaker 1: lot of these camps. The guys are in the spring,
Speaker 1: so that means they have to you know, take a
Speaker 1: boat out of storage, a motor out of storage. Yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: So there's there's time involved even if they do here
Speaker 1: s right to get to us.
Speaker 2: They've now been in and out of the water for
Speaker 2: over two hours, but people on the shore have heard them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just you know, I remember seeing the
Speaker 1: boat come out.
Speaker 3: It was two guys.
Speaker 1: They were basically you know, I don't think we had
Speaker 1: to say a whole lot. I think what they would
Speaker 1: have seen would have been pretty self explanatory. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: almost like, you know what, I don't remember the boat
Speaker 1: ride from like our canoe back to their their dock
Speaker 1: or their camp.
Speaker 3: I really don't, but yeah, so it was.
Speaker 1: You know, and then and then I think there's also
Speaker 1: both physically and mentally, you know when you see that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's an adrenaline dump or what,
Speaker 1: but you just again you kind of feel your energy
Speaker 1: just drain out of you, like I think, you know,
Speaker 1: your body and with hypothermia, like we absolutely had hypothermia.
Speaker 1: You know, we had had severe shivers and then stopped
Speaker 1: and then back, you know, shivering on and off at
Speaker 1: different levels.
Speaker 2: How long were you out there? How long were you
Speaker 2: in the water wet?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were in the water wet for I think
Speaker 1: it was close to two and a half hours, which,
Speaker 1: like I say, knowing the water temperature, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 3: It was not fun for sure.
Speaker 2: How long would you have lasted, do you know?
Speaker 1: I mean, if we could have stayed out of there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of unknowns.
Speaker 3: I don't know is the answer.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if we could have stayed out
Speaker 1: of the water, like the air temperature was above freezing,
Speaker 1: and you know, when we were up on the boat
Speaker 1: out of the water, we were Okay.
Speaker 2: There's no way to know exactly how long these guys
Speaker 2: would have lasted because the variables are just so many.
Speaker 2: But after some research on hypothermia, these guys could have
Speaker 2: lost consciousness in as little as two hours, but they
Speaker 2: most certainly wouldn't have lasted more than six hours. Them
Speaker 2: spending two and a half hours, and these conditions bordered
Speaker 2: on tragedy, but they had just been rescued. Do you
Speaker 2: remember what they said to you, what happened when you
Speaker 2: got back to that cabin?
Speaker 1: You know what, I can't say enough. They were just
Speaker 1: fantastic people. And it's to be honest, it's a reflection
Speaker 1: I think of people that live in those northern communities
Speaker 1: or you know, to even go broader like I think,
Speaker 1: not to say urban people don't help each other. They
Speaker 1: do all the time, of course, but in a situation
Speaker 1: like that, you know, these were local people born and
Speaker 1: raised in Kappascasing northern community. Everybody just lives in that environment,
Speaker 1: and accidents happened in those environments, and.
Speaker 3: I think they knew what to do.
Speaker 1: They were incredibly you know, caring, compassionate, They were just
Speaker 1: they were all about taking care of us, which yeah,
Speaker 1: and it really wasn't long.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we were only in.
Speaker 1: Their cabin I'm guessing here, but I'm going to say
Speaker 1: it was under half an hour, like maybe fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And then you hear the helicopter coming. So again mixed
Speaker 1: emotions of of like, okay, well this.
Speaker 3: Is great, but I'm like, where have you been for
Speaker 3: the last two and a half hours? Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 3: it was kind of you know, it was cool.
Speaker 1: We had the helicopters showed up and it basically there
Speaker 1: wasn't much of a land well there really wasn't a
Speaker 1: landing area for it in front of this cab, and
Speaker 1: so it was kind of hovering in front, and then
Speaker 1: inside the helicopter was one of our one of our partners,
Speaker 1: so it was another conservation officer and part of the
Speaker 1: reason the helicopter took so long. When the helicopter was
Speaker 1: initially dispatched to come get us, there was I guess
Speaker 1: some concern that, you know, when our personal locator beacon
Speaker 1: goes off, nobody knows why that is, right, right, So
Speaker 1: they're like, well, if these guys are in a gunfight,
Speaker 1: we don't want to send a helicopter into, you know,
Speaker 1: a situation that would be dangerous for them. Long story short,
Speaker 1: they had they decided they wanted to get another armed
Speaker 1: conservation officer to go in the helicopter with them in case,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, who knows. So one of our partners
Speaker 1: gets out of the helicopter. At that point, I think
Speaker 1: we they had brought. It was kind of funny. We
Speaker 1: looked really really sad. We looked like prisoners. But we
Speaker 1: had our forest firefighters up here where like one piece
Speaker 1: bright orange jumpsuits.
Speaker 3: That's that's the outfit they were to fight fires.
Speaker 1: So we put those on in order to leave the
Speaker 1: clothes that you know, the people that rescued us gave us.
Speaker 1: And like I say, I don't even think we were
Speaker 1: wearing close to be honest, I think we were just
Speaker 1: wrapped up in a blank yeah, yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3: So we put on.
Speaker 1: These orange, orange jumpsuits. You know, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: this and I'm sure we looked like these pale, white.
Speaker 3: Drowned rats.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So we get up into the helicopter were then
Speaker 1: flown out to a town called Hurst, where we went
Speaker 1: to the hospital and we were treated just for basically
Speaker 1: a couple hours.
Speaker 3: We stayed in the hospital.
Speaker 2: It's surprising, but these guys made it out without any
Speaker 2: serious injuries, just a traumatic event.
Speaker 1: The funniest part is, you know, there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things that stick out with me. One is how, you know,
Speaker 1: it would have been very, very different if a few
Speaker 1: things didn't happen. If if you know, if I didn't
Speaker 1: find the life jacket that I wasn't wearing to put
Speaker 1: it on, and I had tried to swim to shore,
Speaker 1: I think that would have been a very different and
Speaker 1: bad story. I don't think I would have made it,
Speaker 1: you know, if I didn't have if my backpack with
Speaker 1: my safety stuff didn't pop up, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: access to that personal locator beacon or the airhorn, again,
Speaker 1: could have been a very different story. And if I
Speaker 1: didn't even bring those things with me in the first
Speaker 1: place and didn't have them in the backpack, again, could
Speaker 1: have been very different. So you know, I'm super thankful,
Speaker 1: and I guess I'm not proud of our training, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thankful that our training and the things
Speaker 1: that we're told to bring that you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of instilling that, yeah, you just don't leave without those things,
Speaker 1: which I didn't. The other thing that was strange is,
Speaker 1: you know, having never been in a situation like that,
Speaker 1: just that you know, you're sitting on top of the
Speaker 1: canoe wondering, you know's what's going to happen. You start
Speaker 1: thinking about, huh, I wonder you know, who's going to
Speaker 1: come to my funeral and what's that going to look like?
Speaker 1: And the biggest thing was it was just such a
Speaker 1: beautiful day you never think of maybe not making it
Speaker 1: tomorrow when the sky is you know, this beautiful blue,
Speaker 1: and the trees are nice, and you're out where you
Speaker 1: love to be.
Speaker 2: So I think there's something that Rob has seriously overlooked.
Speaker 2: I don't hesitate to bring it up. I think we've
Speaker 2: all been thinking it since the beginning. Well, Rob, I
Speaker 2: hate to be an armchair quarterback. But part of your
Speaker 2: story when you told it to me, I saw ride
Speaker 2: off where you made your mistake, and it was that
Speaker 2: you have had a banana in your boat.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: Do they not talk in Canada about how you should
Speaker 2: never breathe a banana in a boat?
Speaker 1: I think even pirates maybe knew about that, didn't they.
Speaker 3: That should absolutely be part of what training.
Speaker 1: You are right, You are absolutely right, and I have
Speaker 1: thought of it until you just mentioned it now. But
Speaker 1: that is funny and the whole time, I've been blaming
Speaker 1: mother nature. It's not mother nature. It was the banana. Uh.
Speaker 1: Next time, I'm changing my story. I'm gonna say it
Speaker 1: was an orange.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you should change that. You're gonna get a
Speaker 2: lot of criticism for this.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to bear Grease.
Speaker 2: Thankfully Rob and Greg survived. These stories are so powerful
Speaker 2: because they give us insight for how to survive. And
Speaker 2: I hope that none of us ever get in a
Speaker 2: situation like that, but if we do, maybe some of
Speaker 2: the stuff you learned here today will help you survive.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to bear Grease and
Speaker 2: supporting this channel and supporting Old Brent Reeves in this
Speaker 2: country life an old lake Pickle with the Backwoods University
Speaker 2: means the world to us. Please check out our the
Speaker 2: Bear Grease YouTube channel and Instagram, and until next time,
Speaker 2: if you have a choice, keep the wild places wild,
Speaker 2: because that's where the bears live.