Lower Mainlanders who watch local TV news are familiar with the image of a reporter standing in a forest-rimmed parking lot looking into the camera lens and saying: “ North Shore Search and Rescue (NSR) are on the scene.”
The familiar shot is usually followed by images of the NSR team either heading into the woods or emerging from them.
Now thanks to the new Knowledge Network five-part documentary series Search and Rescue: North Shore— premiering Nov. 10 at 9 p.m. — we get a look at what goes on between those entries and exits.
“I really hope the viewers get a greater appreciation of what the volunteers of North Shore Rescue go through,” said NSR team leader and 24-year veteran Mike Danks in a recent phone interview. “That’s what it really is about for me. It’s about them understanding the time commitment. I think people just see the beginning and the end of these things, but they don’t get to see what happens behind the scenes, and the behind the scenes is probably 80 per cent of our operation.
“The calls are the icing on the cake. It’s how we prepare our members to deal with these calls and to also see the level of service North Shore Rescue offers in this province is unprecedented,” added Danks, whose father was a longtime NSR member. “I think people have no idea of the commitment level it takes to attain that.”
The basic commitment is a minimum of 300 hours a year for the 50 or so active NSR members.
The busiest and one of the oldest volunteer search-and-rescue groups in Canada — in B.C. there are 80 teams with over 2,500 volunteer search-and-rescue members — began officially in 1965 as the North Shore Emergency Measures Organization. The volunteer group was to be trained to help the community through civic disasters like an atomic bomb attack.
That Cold War crisis averted, in 1968, the team switched gears from gas masks to leg gaiters after a young man fell off the north face of Goat Mountain (behind Grouse Mountain).
Now, all these years later, the team is a geared-up, precision force with its eye on always improving. Currently, they’re developing a night vision program and a new hoist system.
While the NSR is developing plans for the future, Search and Rescue: North Shore puts the viewer right in the now and offers a compelling snapshot of what this group does on a regular basis.
The team got to see the new series on an inflatable screen from the comfort and COVID-19-safe confines of their own vehicles. Now headed for public consumption, team member and nurse Kayla Brolly hopes that viewers not only enjoy the show, but also take away a message that the series makes as clear as a mountain stream.
“There are lots of teachable moments about preparedness and misadventure. Hopefully viewers can get some knowledge and education from that,” said Brolly, who joined the team in 2013 and, along with ER doctor Alec Ritchie, formed the NSR’s Advanced Medical Providers Team, a group of doctors and nurses that have top-notch outdoor skill sets.
At the start of the series, Danks doesn’t beat around any bushes or trees and states simply that the growth in the population combined with easy access to the North Shore Mountains is simply a “recipe for disaster.”
“The call volume we are seeing, I mean this year alone is going to be our busiest year ever,” said Danks, who reports the team was close to 130 call-outs by the third week in October and that includes a three-month break due to COVID-19.
“We’re super-busy because, yeah, Instagram. Social media is getting people out to trails that normally no one even knew about so now we are getting novice hikers going on these trails that are way over their heads,” added Danks.
But whatever the circumstance surrounding the need for help, the NSR team is on-board and understanding. In their world accidents happen in the wilderness environment.
“I understand why the public gets upset by some of the folks but from our perspective everyone makes mistakes every day in our lives and often times they are small and there are no consequence,” said Brolly. “No one should pay with their life for a mistake. You are never going to rescue the same people twice. They are going to learn their lesson.”
Search and Rescue: North Shore is produced by Vancouver’s Peg Leg Films. The award-winning team behind the film This Mountain Life embedded field camera operators Ian Christie and Grant Baldwin (also the series director) with the NSR team for a full year.
They went on the calls and they came back with footage so close to the action that it’s hard not to shiver as you watch team members carefully pick their way down a steep North Shore slope in the pouring rain at two in the morning. Also, be warned, if you have a thing about heights, some of the more spectacular and longline helicopter manoeuvres may make you a bit queasy.
“The biggest surprise for me is how nobody really knows what’s going to happen. Including the team members until you’re in it,” said Baldwin, who along with Christie are now part of the NSR resource members team. “That, from a filmmaking perspective, is the hardest thing, knowing where to be. Then are we going to be physically good enough to be able to follow them all night through horrible weather and keep equipment working and are we doing the right thing to send a camera with this field team or should we wait for the second field team? Those were just logistical things, but the hardest thing for me was seeing dead people and dealing with that.”
For series producer Jenny Rustemeyer, a big surprise was the diverse makeup of the team.
“I thought they were going to be a bunch of young guys with no other responsibilities or something, but it’s a range of people,” said Rustemeyer. “There’s retirees, there’s people with young kids, there’s mom’s on the team and they are all putting themselves out there. I was interested to kind of find out what is driving these people to volunteer. To give so much to their community and what do they get out of it?
“It’s a lifestyle for sure,” added Rustemeyer.
Baldwin hopes viewers learn from the show and see that the NSR team is a bunch of normal people who come together to do extraordinary things.
“They are relatable people. They are not trying to put on a show and there’s not a lot of ego going on on this team at all,” said Baldwin. “I want (viewers) to see that but also want them to realize what it is they actually do. That they look for people who are despondent, that they look for elderly people with Alzheimer’s in the city. Things I think they don’t really know about the team. I think that’s going to be surprising.”
The NSR has been approached to do other film/TV projects. There has even been reality-show offers that Danks said collected “zero interest” from the NSR team. Danks said from the get-go there was a “natural fit” between NSR and the Peg Leg Films people.
“When they started to come out on calls with us we didn’t show them any mercy at all. They needed to keep up and be out of our way and they did a fantastic job,” said Danks.
For Brolly, the TV filming experience was a little out of her comfort zone. In fact, she called it “a bit weird.” But in the end she is happy with the outcome and found it interesting to sit back and observe her own life.
“Seeing it, you realize, ‘Wow, that’s pretty intense,’ ” said Brolly. “When you are in the moment you just kind of go with your training and try to help people, but when you watch it from an outsider perspective you see that it is pretty wild.”