Men honored for heroic river rescue

Page 10

On Nov. 25, 1997, Isiah Halkett woke up to a morning much like any other until his brother John called with an emergency. Some children had fallen through the river ice.

Isiah and his brother ran down to the Montreal River at La Ronge, and saw two young bodies floating in the water. Risking their lives, they and three other men - Stanley Ross, Roy Venne and Hubert Ross - went out on the ice, pulled the children in, and helped resuscitate them.

More than two years later, on Feb. 11, Georgina Isbister and brother Cornelius, are alive and well and giving shy 'thank you's' to their rescuers, but they don't remember much about their ordeal. Isiah remembers the morning, though, and he remembers what was going through his head.

"I was just thinking that it could have been my own kids."

The five men were honored for their lifesaving efforts in a ceremony at the offices of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band office. All five received the Priory Meritorious Certificate Risk of Life from St. John Ambulance, as presented by RCMP Assistant Commissioner Harper Boucher.

Jennifer Isbister remembers looking for her children after they had left a sliding hill, and hearing from a passerby that some children were down by the river.

"I went down there and I noticed my daughter's body, floating."

As she shouted for help, the Halketts arrived, and Isbister went to call an ambulance.

Using a plank, the Halketts tried to get out to the children, but the ice broke under them. Stanley Ross, who was lighter, decided to try.

"Stanley grabbed the stick and jumped in front of me and grabbed the girl," explained Isiah, who with Roy Venne began CPR to revive the child. "When she started making sounds, she started crying, I felt relieved," says Venne. As it turns out, both Isiah and Venne learned CPR as part of their training as forest fire fighters for Saskatchewan Environment and Resource Management.

Meanwhile, Stanley Ross jumped into the front of a boat that had been hauled to the river, and he managed to grab the boy as well. He passed Cornelius to John Halkett and Hubert Ross who performed CPR until an ambulance arrived.

Does the word hero fit well? Isiah Halkett, for one, doesn't seem comfortable with the title.

"I fell through the ice once, and Mark Quandt was the guy that saved my life," he said.

Venne, too, knows the feeling of falling through the ice. Twice, he has gone in, and twice he has gotten out. It is very cold, he says, and very scary.

Such thoughts were far from their minds at the Feb. 11 ceremony however. Isiah said he was sweating.

"I'm nervous now," he grinned.