The North Shore Rescue Team has existed since 1965 and has performed thousands of search and rescue operations on the North Shore Mountains and other locations throughout British Columbia and Washington State. Team activities have assisted at least 4,500 lost or injured individuals in mountain and wilderness settings. While these operations have been featured in numerous media reports throughout Canada and other countries, there is an additional element to these operations to which few people have been exposed. This book presents the oral history of the North Shore Rescue team. Team members, their spouses, and subjects provide unique insights, recollections and perspectives on search and rescue operations. Some stories reflect life and death struggles, others are humorous, some generate disturbing thoughts and some are politically incorrect. Nevertheless, these are the memories and stories from people involved with the most experienced, best trained, best equipped volunteer search and rescue team in Canada. This is a book about selfless volunteers performing complex rescue operations, camaraderie under stressful conditions, lives saved, lives lost, as told by people who were involved. These stories will be of interest to those who climb, snowshoe, ski, hike, kayak, explore or engage in any other form of outdoor recreational activity. None of these stories have ever been revealed to the general public. Each operational story contains a lesson associated with personal safety and provides insights into what to do, or not do, when lost or injured in the wilds.

In May of 2005, North Shore Rescue put together a 40th Anniversary Expedition to Mount Logan. The team was made up of seven men and one woman - all experienced mountaineers and search & rescue personnel. The trip up the mountain was relatively standard, marked by good weather. But on May 25, 2005, their good fortune took a tragic turn. Three members of the team became trapped in an extratropical cyclone on Prospector's Col - an exposed ridge on the mountain. With nothing more than a tent for shelter, they prepared to wait out the storm in winds gusting up to 140 km/h. After 20 hours huddled in their tent in the high winds, the unthinkable happened when their shelter began to disintegrate. With little choice, the three men started to prepare for what they were trained for: survival. Don Jardine and Alex Snigurowicz prepared to dig a snow cave to take refuge in, and Bjarnason set about melting snow so they could rehydrate themselves. Suddenly their tent was ripped from its ice screws and blown over the edge of the mountain, just barely spitting Bjarnason out before it went. Left with no gear beyond two sleeping bags, a sleeping pad, a pot lid and an ice axe, they knew they were in grave trouble. In addition, Bjarnason's overmitts had blown off the mountain with the rest of their gear, exposing his hands to the elements. Snigurowicz and Jardine went to dig the shelter, leaving Bjarnason on his own to weather the storm as best he could. "We will come back for you if we can," they told him. Six hours later they did come back for him, only to find that his hands had frozen to the small rock he'd been using for shelter. Breaking his grip from the rock, the three retreated to their small snow cave to wait out the storm or die. Whichever came first. The next morning, the storm passed. As the day wore on they were able to establish contact with their teammates above and below them, but with 3 feet of new snow and all of them suffering from hypothermia and severe frostbite, there was no way they could retreat off the mountain. Through the efforts of North Shore Rescue, the Alaskan Air Guard, Denali National Park and the Canadian Park Service, the three climbers were eventually airlifted off the mountain by a Lama high-altitude aircraft. For Bjarnason, however, surviving Logan was only the beginning of the adventure. He soon learned he would lose all of his fingers and one of his thumbs, making his future as a firefighter and mountaineer unimaginable. Amazingly, Bjarnason fought his way back. He retrained and requalified for his job as a firefighter, learning to adapt and use what was left of his hands in new ways. And a mere 13 months after being rescued off Mount Logan, he found himself in Russia, standing atop Mount Elbrus, Europe's highest peak. Not only had he reclaimed his career, he had been able to return to high-altitude climbing.

Somewhere in the mists of time, between history and hagiography, stands the great evangelist and missionary St. Patrick. Raised a "cultural Christian," Patrick's encounter with God during captivity in Ireland transformed his life and the history of a people. Freedom from slavery, and a return home to Britain, produced the divine summons--Vox Hibernia--to return to Ireland and the place of captivity in order to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian witness in twenty-first-century Vancouver, Seattle, or Portland is a world away from fifth-century Armagh, Slane, or Cashel. Yet, the great evangelist to pre-Christian peoples of Hibernia has much to teach us as we seek to engage our secular, post-Christian context. There is wisdom in the missional leadership of the one we call St. Patrick that goes well beyond tales of snakes and shamrocks. How might Patrick's mission experience with pre-Christian peoples direct our contemporary missional encounter with post-Christian peoples? Come explore the story of the shepherd slave turned shepherd of souls and discover that there is power still in the legacy of Patrick, when yoked with the Spirit-filled presence and purpose of the risen Christ.

A crab boat off Newfoundland catches fire, and a rescue is undertaken by helicopter. A child goes missing in a New Brunswick forest, and a desperate hunt is mounted. A climber falls on a British Columbia mountain, and a helicopter rescue is attempted. A civilian chopper crashes in Nunavut, and a search-and-rescue team braves a savage snowstorm to find survivors. True Stories of Rescue and Survival features the above true stories and many more from across the country, past and present. Its heroes are to be found in the RCMP, city police forces, the Canadian military, and among all the rescue workers and specialists of the Canadian Coast Guard. Volunteers, too, risk injury and even death to help others. Sidebars spotlight the equipment search-and-rescue teams use, how search dogs are trained, how long-line rescues work, how navy divers are making a difference in the deserts of Afghanistan, and much more.

Melissa Wareham always wanted to work with dogs. After failing her biology O-level she realised she'd have to start at the bottom, cleaning out kennels at Battersea Dogs Home. From frail old men looking for a four-legged companion to famous folk who've lost their favourite hound, it seemed that at some point everyone passes through Battersea's doors. Amongst the clamour of thousands of lost pets crying 'Rescue Me!' and the noise of the railway lines above, Melissa found she had come home. The first dog Melissa fell for was Tulip, a sweet, elderly and somewhat dotty mongrel who decided a solo bus ride into the West End might be fun. Next up was Roscoe: found by the ambulance team with his dead owner, he is rehabilitated with a little help from his master's hat. And then - many, many dogs later - there is Gus. With his owner in jail, Melissa finally finds the dog she is to take home as her own. Heart-warming and compulsively readable, Rescue Me is Melissa's memoir of her fifteen years at Britain's most-loved dogs' home.