Streamlined Search Parties

*

By
ROY THORSEN

*

EARCH programs for missing
hunters and other persons in the
Lower Vancouver Island hinter-

land from now on will have a stream-
lined “new look.”

That is the impression I came
away with after attending a meet-
ing recently of the three groups who
will be mostly involved. Meeting
was made up of representatives of
R.C.M.P. officers from Duncan south,
Staff-Set. Jack Hall, of the Victoria
headquarters of the Island division
as spokesman; Head Ranger Franie

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TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION

Morse, Assistant Head Ranger Ray
Hull, Art Hall (emergency search
service chief) and Gordon Sword,
former head ranger and now pub-
licity representative of the South
Vancouver Island Rangers Inc.; Free-
man King, executive Commissioner
of the Greater Victoria Boy Scouts’
Association (but who said, “I’m here
as a Scouter only,” and red-headed
Frank Nelson, Cordova Bay Cub
Pack leader.

It was a good meeting; cleared the
air on a lot of troubles faced in the
past.

Offer of the Scouts’ representatives
that Scouters (leaders aged 18 and
well up in the manhood ages) to help
out “in any way possible” in future
search schemes was greeted with a
heartfelt “thank you” from both the
Mounties and Rangers. Scouting
movement reps, after hearing about
the Rangers’ emergency service organ-
ization ready to go into action on a
moment’s notice, admitted they were
“amazed at the terrific, efficient
machine” the Rangers had built up
for this sort of an emergency. They
said they had not realized this before.

After serving in the valuable role
in P.C.M.R. as a guard against enemy
invasion from the Island wilderness
in the Second World War, the
Rangers in 1946 (after “stand down”)
reformed into peacetime club, se-
cured a handsome 20-acre parkland
club grounds at Luxton—10 miles
from Victoria—and started setting up
an emergency service for lost persons
as a public service.

Parley agreed that criticism leveled
in the direction of the Rangers in the
big search for a missing hunter last
hunting season in the Sooke Elder

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Logging Co. operations were wholly
unjustified. There was a terrible con-
fusion, chiefly due to the glut of 500
well-meaning-—but often damaging—
citizens who flocked to the scene to
“help” after the radios had broadcast
the case.

“About 80% of them were lia-
bilities—not qualified to enter the
bush as woodsmen or equipped to
handle the chore,” Hull told the
meeting. He pointed out that he had
since contacted radio stations and had
been assured of co-operation in the
future to avert a stampede to a
search area.

Upshot was that demands were
made on the Ranger base operations’
camp kitchen by “outsiders” for food
and coffee when it was equipped only
to handle eight persons at a time—
for the men on the actual hunt.

But there will be no more of that
in future cases—if it can be helped.

System now will be:

If ant) Re@IMEP* otticer figures) a
search is required for a lost person
he will contact the Rangers. Hall’s
“Flying Squad” will go into action,
complete with dogs. If initial efforts
fail, he will (as in the past) call for
the Ranger “stand by” team to come
out.

If a wider search is deemed ad-
visable, radios will then be asked to
open up to seek those who know
their way about in the bush. They
will be asked to go to a certain point,
to be “screened” to determine if
they've “got it” bush-wise. Those
who pass the screening will be
handed onto base camp and put into
action under capable leaders.

“What we want in such a mass

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