NUNAVUT - Choppy waters, rain, fog, wind and cloud – none of these elements affected a group of 12 hardy Canadian Rangers from Clyde River searching for a missing helicopter pilot as much as being forced to come home empty handed.

Canadian Rangers from Clyde River scour the isolated and rugged shoreline of Sam Ford Fiord for any sign of a missing Bell 206 helicopter and its pilot. Twelve rangers from Clyde River took part in the search on Aug. 17 and 18. - photo courtesy of Levi Palituq

The rangers were assisting a Canadian Coast Guard search for the pilot of a helicopter that went missing Aug. 16 while travelling from Clyde River to Pond Inlet in thick fog. After wreckage of the helicopter was found and the pilot presumed dead, the search was handed over to the RCMP on Aug. 18 at around 6:30 p.m.

"We could have kept looking until we exhausted everything but we just had to follow command out there," said Canadian Ranger Levi Palituq, the ranger-in-command of the Clyde River patrol.

Palituq said though no one spoke on the roughly two-hour trip back to Clyde River from Sam Ford Fiord, but he could tell their mood from their body language.

"Not having found the body, everyone was quiet coming back home and we didn't talk very much except myself and two of the other boat owners on the VHF radio. We felt pretty bad about not having found the body," said Palituq.

Palituq said the Clyde River rangers performed admirably assisting the Coast Guard. Participating in search and rescues is part of the job for the Canadian Rangers in all 25 community patrols in Nunavut.

A phone call at 2 a.m. on Aug. 17 roused the 12 Canadian Rangers out of bed in Clyde River. The group set out in three boats to sea to search for the helicopter whose last known location was at the mouth of the Sam Ford Fiord northwest of the community.

"It was raining, foggy, windy, cloudy – everything that could make it miserable," said Palituq.

The helicopter, owned by Universal Helicopters in Newfoundland, was supposed to arrive in Pond Inlet at some point on Aug. 16 and when it did not, a search team was assembled by the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ont., to look for the chopper.

The rangers stopped at Eglington Fiord to dry off before continuing on to Sam Ford Fiord. They had military rations to eat, as well as some traditional foods such as maktaaq, seal, and Arctic char.

Then the rangers received a call from the Coast Guard – wreckage had been found of the Bell 206 Longranger that had gone missing -- and they went and checked it out.

Many had assumed the experienced pilot had set down somewhere to wait out the bad weather, and Palituq said nobody had been expressing doubt about finding the pilot alive until they saw the fuselage of the helicopter.

"I don't think anybody talked about it; I don't think anybody thought of it until we saw the wreckage on the ship – that's when we knew that the pilot was really gone," said Palituq. "There was no cockpit on the wrecked fuselage. The cockpit had been torn off on impact."

The rangers then searched the shoreline for the body, venturing to Kigut Peak, far inside the fiord.

"Expecting to see a dead person wasn't anything new to me, or to a large majority of the rangers that went out with me," said Palituq, adding that it's part of the ranger training.

The patrol made camp back at Eglington Fiord and then woke up at 5 a.m. the next morning to continue search.

The waters were calm by the time the 12 rangers headed home to Clyde River that evening, which made the trip physically easier, even if heading home empty-handed was a hard thing for the rangers to do.

Maj. Jeff Allen, commanding officer for all the rangers across the north, applauded their efforts.

"This is another example of the service the Canadian Rangers provide in the North. They used their knowledge of the land, traditional skills and training we give them to serve their communities across the North and Canada," said Allen in a statement on Aug. 23.

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