Man on the Ice by Rex Saunders Page B

us at our meeting. Some of these things came to memory.
     The most important thing is to try and keep warm and not to panic. Thanks again,
     Carl and Max. Also, thanks to the following boys who went looking for me in
     their longliners and speedboats. Some of you walked alongshore and in small
     coves just in case I had somehow gotten ashore.

    My brothers, Wade, Herb, and Ezra Saunders

    Thanks, boys.

Afterword
    I ’ M NOT SAYING ANYTHING about the Coast Guard
     people, because they did all they could to find me. But there is one thing that
     bothers me. It was April, 2009, when two DFO officers came to St. Lunaire-Griquet
     and had meetings with the men who were going out ice sealing. They showed us
     video pictures or slides of sealers killing seals on the ice from their
     speedboats. They were shooting the seals with rifles. Then one of the men ran
     across the ice pan and hooked his gaff in the seal. The DFO officer said that the
     sealer did the wrong thing. He was supposed to cut the seal open and make sure
     the main arteries were severed so the seal would be properly bled out before it
     died.
    All that was okay, but the thing that bothered me the most was
     the fact that those pictures were taken from a DFO airplane eight miles away.
     That’s what the DFO officers told us. I wondered if the Coast Guard would save
     money if they invested in a few of these cameras. They may cost a few thousand
     dollars, but they would save a few thousand dollars in fuel for planes and
     helicopters and big boats. Just a thought. I’m sure the people running the Coast
     Guard know what they’re doing.
    The pilot of the helicopter phoned me a week or so after I was rescued, and he
     told me he saw a green shrimp bag frozen in a small clump of ice. At first he
     thought it might have been something from my boat. He felt very bad when I told
     him he was so close to me.

REX SAUNDERS is the second-eldest of Fred
     and Olive Saunders’s ten children. He was born in St. Leonard’s, now known
     as St. Lunaire-Griquet, on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. His
     family moved to Main Brook, White Bay, where he attended school as a boy. He
     began making his way as a fisherman at a young age, both on shore and off,
     plying his trade on the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts. Over the years he
     has worked as a fisherman, woodsman, and sealer. On May 4, 2009, Rex Saunders
     went missing after his sealing vessel capsized; he spent two nights alone on
     the ice floes off the northern Newfoundland coast. His story of survival went
     national after he was rescued from the ice approximately fifty-three
     kilometres from his home. He is married to the former Irene Earle. They have
     five children and six grandchildren and currently reside in St.
     Lunaire-Griquet, Newfoundland.