The West Shore Local Hero Awards are back! You can find this year’s special feature in the March 22 edition of the Goldstream Gazette or online under e-editions. Stay tuned for more on each of this year’s honourees, you will be able to read their stories online at goldstreamgazette.com.
The Juan de Fuca Electoral Area is littered with some of the best outdoor recreation areas in the world, attracting thousands of hikers, bikers, kayakers and climbers each year.
While those activities are largely safe and easy to enjoy, the risk of disaster is never zero.
So what happens when that picturesque backpacking trip along the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail goes wrong, and you are left injured, cold and kilometres from civilization?
You call the quiet professionals at Juan de Fuca Search and Rescue.
Headquartered in East Sooke and responsible for all forms of ground search and rescue in the electoral area and responding to mutual aid calls across southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, the team of 40 rescuers respond 24/7, 365 days a year and in all weather conditions. That alone is enough to earn them the honour of our Bravery and Courage Award, but the fact the organization is entirely volunteer-run also makes it an obvious choice.
“It’s a really big honour for our team. We do it because we love it, but getting a little recognition really boosts our spirits and gives us the support we need to keep going,” said team manager Victoria Clarke. “It is not just about being adrenaline junkies. What I see in our volunteers is a genuine desire to marry their passion for the outdoors with public service.”
The team is most often called out for injured hikers on the JDF Marine Trail and typically responds to around 30 calls per year. But those calls, which often involve spending hours in the wilderness navigating challenging terrain at night, only tell part of the story of the volunteers’ dedication.
Clarke said each member trains over three to six months when they first join the team to meet provincial SAR standards, and then train at least once per month to maintain those skills.
If the members want to move on to the group’s specialized teams – utilizing advanced rope rescue, tracking, swift water rescue and advanced first aid skills – or want to move into team leadership or search management, that training only increases.
“It really takes a special kind of person. When you get a call-out at 11 p.m., just as you are falling asleep and have a busy work day ahead, what is there to entice you to go out, knowing you won’t get home until the morning and it’s raining and you are going to be knee-deep in mud,” said Clarke. “I think it’s a real sense of duty and camaraderie. It’s not so much a SAR team, but a SAR family after a while.”
It’s for this reason alone Dwight Yochim, senior manager with the BC Search and Rescue Association, feels SAR volunteers like those at JDF SAR are better described as “unpaid professionals.”
“You look at the quality of the training and the amount of training these individuals have, and it’s pretty significant,” said Yochim. “It’s really important to recognize these teams that are doing so much for their communities. I think a lot of people hear about the big teams in the province when they are on the news, and they don’t understand that there are 78 other teams out there doing just as important work in their communities.”
READ MORE: 2023 Local Hero Awards
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