After more than 40 years of service, one of Powell River’s most dedicated volunteers is hanging up his red Gore-Tex jacket.
Powell River Search and Rescue (SAR) manager Don McLeod has decided to take a step back and let others in the team take the lead.
“It’s been a great feeling to help save people,” said McLeod. “But when you’re managing searches you don’t get to hang off the helicopter.”
McLeod said he is going to miss the people that he has worked with over the years and he is available to help if needed. However, it is time to try something new. “It’s just something I decided to change.”
McLeod is one of the founding members of SAR. The group was started in 1991, but his involvement in finding lost people goes back to when he was 16 years old.
McLeod told the Peak that his first search was in 1970 when he had heard a woman was lost and local searchers were asking for volunteers. He skipped school that day to join the search. He found her floating beside a breakwater, deceased. “That kept me interested,” he said.
At the same time, McLeod was developing his knowledge of the backcountry around the Sunshine Coast which he credits as one of his biggest assets. In August 1970 he joined a hiking trip of 27 Powell River boys who hiked almost 150 kilometres of rugged mountain terrain between Squamish and Powell River. Powell River Chamber of Commerce had organized the hike, called the Dogwood Trek, to see if an overland route could be established to the Lower Mainland.
Through the 1980s, McLeod volunteered with the Provincial Emergency Program which had a small group of search and rescue volunteers in Powell River. As more trails were built through the backcountry, people began venturing farther afield. Demand for trained search volunteers increased and by the late 1980s McLeod and co-founder Karen Whyard decided to seek out more training and build up a more organized group.
McLeod undertook training courses in managing searches and avalanche awareness at the Justice Institute of BC, in addition to technical rope courses and first aid.
Over the past 23 years, McLeod and other dedicated volunteers have worked to build up the team of searchers. It has been common for SAR to receive an average of 10 calls each year for mushroom pickers, hunters or hikers who have run out of daylight and found themselves lost. Two or three of the searches are usually large enough to seek out mutual assistance from search and rescue teams on Vancouver Island or the Sechelt Peninsula.
“Without Don’s continued commitment through all of those years it would have been really difficult to have a search and rescue group here,” said Whyard.
SAR, which recently became a non-profit society, is operated by volunteers who selflessly donate their time, skills and equipment. It’s not publicly funded, though it has received money from time to time from the City of Powell River, Powell River Regional District and the Kiwanis Club to help pay for some of the costs for replacing maps and gear. The group was given space to train in Cranberry at the fire hall and a truck from the city to use over the years. Last month the city approved funding to go toward the cost of a mobile command unit for the society.
“We’ve never had a lot of equipment,” said McLeod. “I only got an ATV two or three years ago and we’ve never had boats or snowmobiles.”
The last rope order SAR made cost over $1,000 and a stretcher to bring injured hikers out of the woods cost over $1,400.
McLeod has had to use his own boat several times over the years to assist BC Ambulance Service paramedics reach people in cabins up Powell Lake.
For McLeod the excitement of the search has kept him interested over the years. He prides himself on using a common sense approach and tries to find out as much information as he can about the person and where they could have gone.
“Nothing got in his way,” said Whyard. “He was just focused on the person who was lost. He’s a natural.”
McLeod, a realtor and lifelong resident of Powell River, has been involved in a number of community groups over the years. He has volunteered countless hours with Powell River Sunset Homes Society, Cranberry Ratepayers Association, Cranberry citizens’ watch (a precursor to Powell River Citizens on Patrol), and several different committees in city government. He was an auxiliary firefighter for 11 years.
“It’s my community,” said McLeod. “Someone needs to step up.”
