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Rescue saves child from makeshift raft

"I could see his eyes looking up through the water"

JOHN THOMPSON

Eric McNair-Landry: "Saving people's lives isn't exactly in the job description." (PHOTO BY JOHN THOMPSON)

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When the eyes of an eight-year-old boy stared up from beneath the waves this past Monday, Eric McNair-Landry wondered whether he had locked eyes with a corpse.

Instead, he reached a nearly-drowned child who had almost made his last bob for air. At that moment, two small hands were all that broke the water's surface. With a heave, McNair-Landry grabbed Pauloosie Ipeelie by his nylon windbreaker and lifted him to his canoe. The child was later flown to an Ottawa hospital, where, at press time on Wednesday afternoon, he was conscious and in stable condition.

That cool, overcast morning had begun unremarkably enough for McNair-Landry, 20. He helped his co-workers open the Iqaluit visitor's centre, then settled into his morning coffee and began planning work on his current project, a map of paddling rivers in Nunavut - "which is sort of ironic, when you think about what happened next."

Fifteen minutes after opening, a small boy in hip-waders approached the desk and asked a co-worker, Sarah Brown, if he could use the phone.

When she asked why, he said he said his cousin was in a boat in the bay, and he was in trouble. He tried phoning his father, who wasn't home, and left without looking too concerned.

"When he said 'trouble,' it sounded like he shouldn't be in the boat," she said. "He didn't say danger." It took a minute for her and the other employees to decide to climb upstairs and look out the bay windows facing the water, just in case.

And scanning the flat, grey sea, it took several minutes for anyone to spot a vessel in the water. Then, one noticed a child paddling a pink piece of styrofoam, fashioned into a raft, floating off the breakwater behind the Northmart store.

As they watched, the makeshift raft capsized, dumping the child into the water and floating away from his reach.

McNair-Landry looked at co-worker Mike Mifflin for a moment. Then they bolted for the door.

Both knew the tides that heave and tug the waters surrounding Frobisher Bay are among the strongest in the world. They were concerned that if they didn't act fast, the child would be sucked out to sea. McNair-Landry's mother lives near the breakwater, and they hoped to commandeer her double canoe to rescue the child.

But when they arrived, the canoe they expected to find was missing. All they could find was a smaller, thin-shelled canoe built to carry one person. "It turns on a dime. It also capsizes on a dime," McNair-Landry said.

Mifflin hauled the small boat to the beach and, once McNair-Landry climbed inside, helped drag it to the water. Meanwhile, the boy had drifted further out, and his head only intermittently broke the water's surface.

McNair-Landry said his mind rushed so quickly when he launched, he needed to pause for a moment, collect himself, and remember how to paddle.

"You realize the only way you'll get out there is think. Then I started to paddle how you're supposed to paddle."

From the shore, a growing crowd watched in horror as the child drifted further into the bay, and his bobbing head began to slip beneath the surface. "It was horrible," said Bob Kucharski. "To watch a child drown in front of you when 50 people are standing there."

An eerie sight met McNair-Landry as he approached the two small hands that broke the water's surface. "I could see his eyes looking up through the water," he said.

Seawater drained from the child's nylon windbreaker and thick sweatpants once McNair-Landry hauled him up on the boat. Ipeelie began to cough up white flecks of foam.

Moments later, two men arrived in a larger wooden canoe equipped with an outboard motor. They loaded the boy aboard, wrapped him in a sleeping bag and headed for shore, where RCMP officers, an ambulance and a crowd of bystanders waited.

Ipeelie remained unconscious as he was taken to the Baffin Regional Hospital, then later airlifted south.

Once the ambulance left, bystanders took the remaining styrofoam that littered the beach and broke it into small pieces to prevent similar accidents in the future.

McNair-Landry took his time paddling back. After answering questions from police and changing into dry clothes, he returned to work.

"It's definitely one of the more unusual days at the visitor's centre," he said. "Saving people's lives isn't exactly in the job description."

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