The Canadian Rangers have completed their longest military operation in Northern Ontario, according to the officer commanding the Canadian Army’s 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group.
“What they did was a great success during this historic (Covid-19) pandemic,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Shane McArthur.
Canadian Rangers rescued two stranded teenaged hunters and found an escaped suicidal patient in two successful search missions in three days in August.
The boys, aged 14 and 15, got their all-terrain vehicles stuck in the challenging swampy terrain 100 kilometers north of Fort Severn and sent a text message to one of their fathers asking for help. Fort Severn, Ontario’s most northerly community, is a small Cree settlement on Hudson Bay, 1,500 kilometers north of Toronto.
Camp Loon, which annually attracts top Junior Canadian Rangers to more than a week of advanced leadership training, will not be held in August because of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Unfortunately, Camp Loon will not go ahead this year,” said Captain Jason Dech, the Canadian Army officer who commands the Junior Ranger program in Northern Ontario. “To bring the number of people who attend the camp to a single location does not make sense this year.
More than 100 Canadian Rangers have been placed on active duty in 30 First Nations across the Far North of Ontario as part of the Canadian Armed Forces initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another 45 Rangers are ready to go on active duty if they are needed and others are expected to volunteer if required.
A group of new Canadian Rangers are key players in Exercise Norex20, a week-long army exercise providing about 200 reserve soldiers from southern Ontario with specialized training in the Northern Ontario bush.
The Rangers , who are part-time reservists, are from four related First Nations – Aroland, Ginoogaming, Long Lake # 58, and Marten Falls –and from the nearby small towns of Geraldton and Long Lac. They are acting as guides and also as teachers as they pass on their traditional on-the-land skills to the soldiers.
Two groups of Canadian Rangers have completed an intensive test of their skills in a military exercise designed to test their mobility on the land and challenge their traditional abilities.
“Exercise Mobile Ranger was an exercise that focused on mobility both overland and by air, as well as on winter survival skills for the Rangers,” said Major Charles Ohlke, the Canadian Army officer commanding the Rangers in Northern Ontario. “Any opportunity to practice a skill results in improvement. This was a great exercise with a tremendous effort by all the Rangers involved.”
It was a day Shawnda Mamakwa is unlikely to forget.
She received the annual Keewaywin award for being the year’s outstanding youth in Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) and she was sworn in as a new Canadian Ranger before the assembled chiefs, delegates, and observers at this year’s Keewaywin Conference in Kingfisher Lake First Nation.
As a new Ranger, Shawnda, 19, becomes a part-time army reservist with the Kingfisher Lake Ranger patrol.
A few years ago the Canadian Armed Forces had a recruiting slogan that said “there’s no life like it.”
For Sergeant Eric Scott, a new Canadian Ranger instructor with the 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (3 CRPG), which commands the Rangers of the Far North of Ontario, the slogan still rings true.
He joined 3 CRPG as a Canadian Ranger instructor last December, after 22 years with the Canadian Army. A month later he found himself in an immersion suit and floating in broken ice in Parry Sound harbour while learning how to rescue someone who had fallen through ice.
A hunting injury in a remote part of the Far North of Ontario resulted in a situation that was “interesting,” according the Canadian Army officer who commands the Canadian Rangers of Northern Ontario.
“Life in the North is very different from the South,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Richardson, commanding officer of the 3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group. “The Rangers in rhe North do a good job when they are needed. And this was a situation where they were needed. There was nobody else who could help.”
Canadian Rangers are part-time army reservists.
Canadian Rangers in two isolated Northern Ontario communities have responded to three potentially life threatening emergencies in a 48-hour period.
“It’s been a busy couple of days,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Richardson, who commands the 630 Canadian Rangers in 27 remote First Nation communities across the Far North of Ontario. “We’ve responded to three separate emergencies and the Rangers have demonstrated their ability to respond quickly and efficiently.”
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