Peter Moon - Canadian Rangers

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”