A picture taken during the team's last deployment at Wollaston Lake last month. (Submitted photo/ Michelle Vandevord)

By Nigel Maxwell

Missing persons

PAGC Search, Rescue, and Recovery team resumes search for missing boaters

Nov 2, 2021 | 11:36 AM

Update: According to a Facebook post from Prince Albert Grand Council, the search was called off Wednesday afternoon due to changing weather patterns and unsafe conditions created by the lake freezing up. The search will resume in the spring.

The search and recovery effort to find two missing boaters in northern Saskatchewan is growing.

Prince Albert Grand Council’s Search, Rescue, and Recovery team (PAGC-SRR) will head out Wednesday to Wollaston Lake, to assist in the search for the two members of Hatchet Lake Denesuline Nation.

On Oct. 13 the Wollaston Lake RCMP received a complaint about three overdue boaters, two males and one female. One male boater left Wollaston Lake at approximately 12:30 p.m. to pick up the other male and the female at the barge landing. However, they were supposed to return two and a half hours later, but they did not make it back. Three days later on Oct. 16, after a search effort was made, one of the men was found deceased.

“The last three weeks have been a difficult time for the families, community, and all those affected by this tragedy. Despite a thorough search by RCMP and others, two of the three boaters are still missing, and we plan on resuming their efforts in a four-day operation with the help of a special crew from Lloydminister and Manitoba,” PAGC Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte said in a statement.

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Michelle Vandevord, associate director of Sask. First Nations Emergency Management, told paNOW the teams will have three sonars in the lake at the same time.

“We hope to cover a large area while we are there. It’s a huge lake so prayers the teams are successful,” she said.

(Submitted photo/ Michelle Vandevord)

For two weeks, Wollaston Lake RCMP had conducted a search, along with help from the Canadian Rangers, the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association, and community volunteers from Hatchet Lake Denesuline Nation, Wollaston Lake, and Stanley Mission areas.

According to a media release last week from RCMP, their search effort has now become reactive in nature which means the police will do targeted searching when they receive new information.

The other teams involved in the search effort include the Lloydminster Rescue Squad, a group who are certified scuba divers, experienced with under-ice rescue and water rescue, and the Hutterian Emergency Aquatic Response Team (HEART), a volunteer group of certified divers from the Oak Bluff Hutterite Colony in Manitoba who specialize in underwater search and rescue.

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nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell