NAFTA wish list doesn’t have a chance
PAIR CREDIT TV SHOW FOR HELPING WITH ORDEAL ON REMOTE ONTARIO ISLAND
From beginning to end, it was a textbook case of how to survive on a deserted Canadian island. And marooned American boater Bob Brott says his survival was all thanks to Les Stroud, the creator and star of Survivorman.
“I am a huge fan of your fellow countryman, Survivorman — I love that show,” said Brott, speaking to the National Post by phone from Minnesota.
“Believe it or not, that’s what I reflected back on to when it came to making decisions,” he said.
Brott’s ordeal had started with nothing more than a faulty bilge pump, but within minutes it left him and his cousin Gary Soucie clinging to the bottom of a capsized boat in rough waters.
The pair, both from the U.S. Midwest, had been walleye fishing on Lake of the Woods, the massive lake that straddles Ontario, Manitoba and Minnesota.
On July 31, Brott had been just about to change fuel tanks on his 1974 Glasspar when he noticed that the bilge pump was clogged.
As high waves poured in over the gunwales — and frantic bailing proved useless — the men had only enough time to don life jackets before being pitched into the waves. Brott’s cellphone was lost in the melee; Soucie’s was destroyed by water damage just as he tried to hit “911.”
“I went into the water holding the phone over my head like the Statue of Liberty to keep it dry — but it didn’t work,” Soucie said.
Altogether, it was less than five minutes before the boat sink under their feet.
What followed was a long, miserable night of clinging to the keel of their overturned boat, and watching for approaching waves in the moonlight. With waves higher than one metre, the pair frequently had to link arms and brace as the water cascaded overtop of them.
Only around midnight did their boat scrape ashore at Big Island, a large, uninhabited island just beyond the Canadian border.
The men had lost all their tools and fishing gear in the sinking, and were wading ashore armed only with a Bic lighter. Far from boating lanes, they were also woefully invisible to passing boaters.
And nobody knew they were lost. It wouldn’t be until Soucie failed to show up at a business meeting two days later that his family alerted authorities.
Aside from Soucie having some background in the Boy Scouts and a whiff of military training, they had no specific survival training. Despite all this, the men proceeded to do almost everything right to stay alive.
They stayed with the boat to conserve their energy, rather than panicking and attempting to make for shore. They boiled their drinking water in a discarded Pepsi can to avoid waterborne illnesses like giardiasis. They built a lean-to shelter to shield themselves and their firewood from rain.
They also proved remarkably adept at finding food. They ate crayfish, foraged for wild peas and ate handfuls of berries whose non-toxicity Brott had confirmed by finding some of them embedded in some nearby bear scat.
The day they were rescued, Brott had already lined up a meal of a garter snake he had found under a rock.
They also began to devise escape plans. First was a plan to light a series of massive signal fires to attract passing U.S. boaters.
Second, they had salvaged the gassed-up outboard motor from the wreck and left it to dry in the sun. Using a section of dock they had found, they intended to fashion a makeshift raft, pair it with the motor and then pilot the craft into a heavy traffic area of the lake.
If all that failed, Brott said he hoped to hike around most of the island, swim across a small strait to Bigsby Island and flag down some campers in Lake of the Woods Provincial Park.
Ultimately, though, the men owed their rescue to some eagle-eyed Mounties. On Aug. 2, an RCMP vessel passed nearby on a routine patrol to look for smugglers, border-jumpers or just anybody doing something illegal on a beach. What caught the eye of Const. Jeff Prevett was a single beam of light reflecting off Brott’s capsized boat.
Pulling closer to shore, Cpl. Stacy Morton witnessed the two haggard men frantically waving. They were soon frantically hugging her as well.
“Cpl. Morton went ashore and the men hugged her several times saying they had ‘never been happier to see the police,’ ” said the RCMP.
Brott said this is the fifth time he has been faced with a life-and-death scenario.
“With each one, my faith grows stronger; especially when we were drifting, I wasn’t overconfident but I felt comfortable that God was watching over us,” he said.
Soucie, in turn, seemed more inclined to credit luck and staying calm.
“The big takeaway here is ‘don’t panic,’ ” he said.