ShareThisAs their father lay unresponsive and without a pulse on the frozen waters of Lake Winnipeg, two children raced through a furious blizzard to find help.
Pounded by winds of more than 50 miles an hour, the 14-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl had nothing but a thin blanket, a compass, a flashlight, a cellphone and each other as they attempted to survive one of the fiercest storms in the history of Canada's Manitoba province.
The trio had left on two snowmobiles Saturday morning from their cottage at Sandy Hook, a lakeside resort area about 50 miles north of Winnipeg. Under blue skies, they set out on a network of groomed trails, crossing to Grand Beach, a small town on the lake's eastern side.
The father, Ric Borlase, was a prominent chartered management accountant in Winnipeg, a member of the Red River College board of governors and an avid snowmobiler. The 51-year-old had separated from his wife, a colleague said, and frequently took his children to the family cottage so they could snowmobile together.
But as they ventured onto the lake to return home that afternoon, a fierce wind sprang up. In minutes, the blue sky was obscured. Visibility dropped to about 30 feet and the family lost the trail.
Surrounded by the storm, they stopped. Suddenly, the father collapsed onto the ice beside his snowmobile, unresponsive to his children's entreaties. They checked his pulse and found that he had none.
Alone in the blizzard, the children faced a heartrending choice: Should they stay? Or should they go find help?
It was just before 3 p.m. The temperature was hovering around 6 degrees below zero. The winds were so strong that meteorological towers in Winnipeg recorded the second-gustiest day on record.
Lost in the middle of the raging storm and unable to help their father themselves, the children decided to go get help. The 14-year-old drove, streaking almost blind across the ice. To avoid driving in circles, he looked up and caught a glimpse of the sun through the snow. He followed it.
Ten minutes later, the children found the shore, and began to drive alongside it.
Suddenly, the snowmobile pitched up over an ice ridge and onto a two-meter drift of soft snow. The skis pointed at the sky. The snowmobile would not move. The children were not only lost, but stuck. They had nothing but a thermal blanket, a compass, a flashlight and a cellular phone.
They called 911.
Soon, the boy was speaking with Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl Greg Zabarosky, calmly describing his situation.
"He said he was out on Lake Winnipeg, somewhere on the shoreline but didn't know where," Zabarosky said. "It was like speaking to an adult, to be quite honest. He was a very amazing young man."
The boy gave a few other bits of information: The trees on the shore were at his back. Near his location were what looked to be several creeks. And when he looked north, the wind was at his face.
From that, Zabarosky and a team of rescuers determined that the children must be somewhere near the south end of Lake Winnipeg, near the marshy areas at the mouth of the Red River. It was the best guess they could make, since the children had no global positioning system, and their cell telephone provider was unable to pinpoint their cellular location.
So police and ambulance drivers were instructed to drive along lakeshore roads, sounding sirens in hopes the children would hear. Experienced local snowmobilers joined in. Among the searchers were Derek Kushnir and his son Cole. With the wind still howling, they slowly made their way through a maze of ice ridges near shore. They stood on their snowmobiles, hoping to pick up some trace of the children or their snowmobile.
As they searched, the lost boy spoke again with Zabarosky. About three hours had passed since their first call. The children had retreated to the trees to find shelter from the wind. For the first time, Zabarosky heard fear creep into the boy's voice. He and his sister were starting to get cold, the boy said. Dusk was beginning to descend, and they seemed no closer to rescue.
Only minutes later, the Kushnirs spotted the stuck snowmobile, its nose still exposed. They yelled, hoping the children would hear them over the wind.
They did.
Moments later, at 6 p.m., the boy and girl walked out from the trees.
"They were cold and scared and upset," Kushnir said. "But they were fine."
The Kushnirs helped the children call their mother, who had not yet heard they were lost, then took them to a waiting ambulance.
The children were safe -- taken to hospital, and quickly released -- but somewhere on Lake Winnipeg, the father was still out in the storm. Rescuers on eight snowmobiles set out to retrace his route through the whiteout.
At 9 p.m., they came upon the father and his snowmobile, both drifted over with snow. The father was dead.
Rescuers said the children's survival is testament to their father's instruction.
"The heroes in this story are the kids, and the knowledge they had in order to survive this ordeal," said Rick Warner, who helped transport the father's body to shore late Saturday.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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