A little-known marine search and rescue team based in Pickering, east of Toronto, is putting out a call for new volunteers as it looks to keep helping people in the water on Lake Ontario. The crew has quietly served the lake for decades, and now it wants more hands on deck to carry that work forward. For those drawn to the water and to lending a hand, the unit is offering a chance to be part of that effort.
Out on Lake Ontario off the Pickering shoreline, the team trains for the kind of emergencies it exists to handle. During a recent training session, members practiced rescuing a person stranded in the water, floating the stranded man into what they call a Jason's cradle and then pulling him up onto the deck of the boat. The drill walked through the steps of getting someone out of the lake quickly and safely.
The group is a member of the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, the volunteer arm that supports marine rescue across the country. As part of that network, the Pickering crew responds to around 30 calls a year, turning out when boaters, swimmers or others on the lake find themselves in trouble and in need of help.
Their patch of water sits just off the Pickering shoreline. On the day of the training, the crew was about a mile and a half to two nautical miles out, just south of Pickering, with the Pickering nuclear power station visible in the background. The unit generally patrols from the Rouge over to Whitby Harbour, and sometimes a little bit beyond that stretch of the lake.
The session was run alongside the Durham Police Marine Unit, which helped train the volunteers. For Serena Burry, it was her first time rescuing someone out of Lake Ontario. She has been with the team for a year and said the experience was pretty similar to their training in the pool, adding that the crew is really thorough when they go over training, so everything felt predictable.
The organization has around 40 volunteers who work on the boat, and it is hoping to bring in more. The members come from all walks of life, including a property manager, a couple of firefighters and people who work in IT. What ties them together, as one put it, is simply an interest in going out on the water and helping out the people who need it.
The unit is approaching a milestone, set to turn 60 next year, while its boat is only about half that age. The crew is now fundraising to replace that vessel. The deputy unit leader said they want a boat that will let them respond to incidents closer to the rocky Lake Ontario shoreline, and one that can hold up to the storms and frigid temperatures the crew sometimes encounters in some pretty rough conditions on the water.