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HAY RIVER
Several people joined forces to save three teenage girls who had floated away from the Hay River Beach late last month.

Mother Lucie Benoit and son R.J. Benoit joined forces to rescue three teenage girls from Great Slave Lake in July. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

The rescuers estimated the girls, all from Alberta, had floated between two and three kilometres out into Great Slave Lake.

At about 5 p.m. on July 29, a woman with a small child on the beach told Lucie Benoit she couldn't see her other children anymore.

"I said, 'What do you mean?'" Benoit recalled. "She said, 'They are on a floater and I can't see them.'"

Benoit, who manages Hay River Territorial Park, ran to the campground for her zoom-lens camera, but could not spot the children on the lake.

Jordan Groenewegen, who lives near the beach, used his high-powered binoculars to scan the lake, and could see the girls' heads bobbing up and down in the waves.

"They were at least a couple of kilometres out, for sure," he said.

Groenewegen call the RCMP using his cellphone.

However, it was then that a potential tragedy was prevented with an amazing bit of luck.

Benoit saw a boat coming out of the nearby mouth of the Hay River and recognized it as belonging to her son, R.J. Benoit.

"I said, "Oh my god, that's R.J.,'" she recalled. "Jordan said, 'Phone him. Phone him.' So I phoned R.J. Thank God he had his cell. I said, 'There are three girls in trouble far away in the lake.'"

R.J. Benoit, who was just out for a spin in his 19-foot boat, was guided to the girls by his mother and Groenewegen on the shore.

The boater said he located the three girls about three kilometres off the beach.

"They were way out there," he said, adding that the waves were about two or three feet and high making it hard to notice the girls.

"I just happened to see the girl was waving her hand and she grabbed the little inflatable thing and she was waving that," he said, referring to the blue floater. "Every once in a while I (saw) a little blue thing that didn't make sense that stood right out to me. I said that's got to be them."

It took about 10 to 15 minutes from the time R.J. Benoit got the call to when he found the girls clinging to the floater.

The inflatable toy had virtually no air left in it and the children had it wrapped around themselves, he said.

"They were just holding it with their heads above the water and they were all screaming and crying," he said. "They had no strength to pull themselves into the boat. I had to pull them into the boat. They were just crying and saying they couldn't move, they were so cold."

They told him they had been in the water for over two hours.

R.J. Benoit said the current was taking them out into the lake, noting the Hay River exits right at the beach.

"If nobody had seen them out there, they would have been goners," he said.

Once the girls were back at the beach, Lucie Benoit said they were crying, screaming and saying thank you.

"They sure hugged their mom when they got on shore," she added.

They were also saying they were cold. So they were taken to the campground for hot showers.

The girls suffered no apparent injuries from their ordeal.

The two sisters and a friend – each about 14 or 15 years or age – were in Hay River with their parents, who were playing on a Paddle Prairie, Alta., team in a slo-pitch tournament.

Lucie Benoit said she understands two of the girls were from Grande Prairie and the other from Paddle Prairie.

The three girls gave her a big hug before their families left the campground.

News/North's attempts to locate the girls and their parents for comment were unsuccessful.

R.J. Benoit said he doesn't feel like a hero because of the rescue.

"Just lucky that I answered my phone," he said. "I was just very lucky to be in the right place at the right time."

He's president of Eagle 88 Enterprises Ltd., which has the contract with the GNWT to manage the Hay River Territorial Park.

Both Lucie and R.J. Benoit say that parental supervision is essential to keep children safe at the beach.

However, they also suggest a number of changes could make the beach safer, including a clearer outline of the swimming area through small buoys connected by a rope instead of the three larger buoys there now and a sign containing a telephone number to call in case of emergency.

They say it is extremely rare for someone to float away from the beach.

No one has drowned at the beach in the 28 years the Benoit family has managed the Hay River Territorial Park.

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