News item: Nov. 6 - Donations final act for local search and rescue. Battlefords Search and Rescue Club disbands as increased insurance costs make volunteer organization untenable. A few months earlier, Search and Rescue Regina "deactivated" for the same reason.
News item: Nov. 17 - Battlefords RCMP seek public's assistance in finding a missing 16-year-old girl, last seen at school. The girl does not have a history of being absent andstays incontact with her family, the press release says. The next day RCMP report having located the missing girl.
News item: Nov. 18 - Big River RCMP report a missing 15-year-old girl from the Big River First Nation. Found the next day.
Putting two-and-two together, I thought, well, there's my column this week. It's idiotic to see search and rescue organizations shut down over insurance issues. If nothing else, the province should pick up the insurance tab, because if we ever need these folks, we can't conjure them up out of the blue.
It turns out, it's not as simple as that.
First off, I was around when the Battlefords Search and Rescue Club got its start. It was founded not long after a hunter went missing and died in the Turtleford area. I was there for every donation, every fundraising event. This was a good, strong community response to a tragedy that could happen to anyone.
Step forward about a decade and this week I phoned Sgt. Neil Tremblay of the Battlefords RCMP. I asked him what's going on, and how prevalent are missing people. Apparently, very prevalent. They deal with runaways every week.
"We usually get two to six to seven a week, just from our detachment alone," he said.
That's shocking, because press releases for missing people are few and far between. He explained that they are often able to locate the "missing" in short order. "We usually find them within hours," he said. As such, the media is not contacted.
Most of these missing people are ages 12-17, in other words, teenage runaways.
Tremblay clarified there is a misconception from TV that one has to wait 24 hours before reporting someone missing. That's not the case. If they're supposed to be somewhere and they're not, they're missing.
Whether a runaway or an overdue hunter or a lost snowmobiler, "We treat them all like they're missing people," he said.
Lost hunters or snowmobilers will often elicit a different response, which can include mobilizing the search team out of Regina.
As for runaway teenagers, weather does play a big factor too, but in a different way. In the summer, missing kids are very common, but not so much in colder weather.
There's no gender prevalence either. Boys and girls take off in similar numbers.
Young children, and those with no history of disappearing are more rare. They also seem to get more attention.
There are some kids, especially those who end up in youth group homes, who disappear on a frequent basis. Some will be reported missing from 12 to 20 times a year!
That's a huge drain on resources, he noted. Yet they have to take it seriously every time.
Generally speaking search and rescue is not activated often. He could recall only a few people believed missing in the bush in the last year and a half where that would be used. Search and rescue resources aren't usually used with the apparently frequently missing youth.
This got me thinking about another news item this week. The Battlefords News-Optimist reported on its Facebook page last night that North Battleford city council had addressed a related issue. "As expected, the resolution calling for an inquiry or roundtable into missing and murdered Indigenous women passed unanimously. It is also confirmed the issue will be an important item at the SUMA convention early next year, as the City of North Battleford is sponsoring a similar motion that will be put to the floor there as well."
I wonder how many of these missing indigenous women start off like that 15-year-old from Big River First Nation? What about the half dozen kids the Battlefords RCMP might deal with in a week? If they run away, and perhaps end up on the street, whose fault and responsibility is that? How do you stop that, and address the root cause? As anyone who has dealt with a headstrong teenager knows, often there's no stopping them.
When a teen does go missing, there's no end to the amount of pain and loss felt by the family. Are they alive? Are they dead? How will they support themselves? Will they have to turn to prostitution? Drugs? Why are they doing this? What did we do so bad that would cause them to do this? Don't they realize how much they are loved?
One thought has often rumbled through my mind. Not all runaways become prostitutes, but it's a pretty good bet most, if not all, prostitutes were once runaways.
One thing is clear to me, there will be no resolution of any sort on the missing and murdered indigenous women file until we somehow get kids to stop running away from home. I don't think that will ever happen. It's human nature to leave the nest at some point, it's just that some do it much too soon. Short of chaining them to a chair, there's nothing we can do to stop them.
And so the heartache begins.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News He can be reached at [email protected].
