Peter Moon - Canadian Rangers

The largest number of Canadian Rangers ever to gather in northern Ontario have completed a five-day search and rescue training exercise.
“We had a record 101 Canadian Rangers from 21 communities participate in Exercise Ranger Tracker,” said Captain Mark Rittwage, officer commanding the Canadian Rangers in northern Ontario. “It was a great collective training exercise. It was highly successful.

Two Peawanuck men who got lost in a surprise blizzard were found alive after a complex search and rescue mission that involved Canadian Rangers, two Royal Canadian Air Force planes, a Wasaya Airways passenger aircraft, and members of the community’s search and rescue team and community volunteers.

Shawn Beauvais was stranded in the middle of the night in a windchill of about –40C, only 11 kilometres from his home in Peawanuck.
He was wet, cold, dehydrated and hungry as he huddled next to a small fire behind the shelter of a snow wall he had built on a river bank. His snowmobile and sled, with its load of firewood, were in the middle of the small river, where, despite the cold, he had bogged down in slush and soaked his boots and trousers before reaching shore.

Parents, relatives, friends and community members filled the Sena School gymnasium in North Caribou Lake for a ceremony marking the opening of the community’s new Junior Canadian Ranger patrol.
“This is an awesome moment for our community,” said Councillor Swanson Kenequanash. “It is going to help our youth to keep out of trouble. It will teach them the traditional uses of the land and how to look after themselves.
“They are going to train with an older group, our Canadian Rangers. That’s going to be a really good thing for the community.”

The Canadian Forces have signed a unique memorandum of understanding with the Ontario Provincial Police to have Canadian Rangers provide formal support in ground search and rescue operations in northern Ontario.
It is the first of its kind in Canada, where provincial police services are the lead agency for ground search and rescue. The OPP are the lead in Ontario, the Quebec provincial police in Quebec, and the RCMP in the rest of Canada.