Harry Almond was honoured for his many years of service with Sunshine Coast Search and Rescue (SC SAR) at the annual appreciation dinner on Nov. 28. Almond – nearly 93 – is the longest serving member of SC SAR, possibly even the longest serving SAR member in Canada.
“One of the most remarkable things is that he’s still doing this kind of thing at the age he is – although he might disagree,” SC SAR volunteer Richard Till said. “He paints, gardens, he’s still active with the amateur radio club and, most notably, he is very bright, he’s very well informed with current events. He’s quite a man.”
Almond retired recently after nearly 30 years of working to build SC SAR into the well-oiled machine it is today.
“Harry really laid out the foundations of the framework of how good communications can work,” Till said. “He did this by actually building equipment, researching, and creating a link between us and the amateur radio club, and thereby getting a lot of us certified in HAM radio operators license.
“For quite a long time that was our main link. It cannot be stressed enough that the greatest challenge in Search and Rescue tasks is predominantly communications. Harry provided us with a number of answers to that challenge,” Till said.
Almond started working with SC SAR in 1988 when his friend John Hind-Smith encouraged him to join. At the time, SC SAR was seriously lacking in manpower and equipment.
“We started off with nothing,” Almond said. “There were about six or seven guys who worked in the bush and if someone went missing in the forest somewhere, they were the ones who would go out to try to find them, with very little equipment. When I joined they had two lanterns, one pager and I think two radios. That was it, nothing else. So we started building up from there.”
An RCMP corporal on the Coast encouraged Almond to apply for a grant from the B.C. government for search and rescue equipment.
“I didn’t know anything about that stuff,” Almond said. “He kept me in his office one evening and filled out all the forms for me. We got a really good grant and bought some radios. That was a start.”
After that, SC SAR acquired more grants and support from the regional district. “We found out we could get grants from all over the place and we started buying stuff,” Almond said. “The first thing we got was an old cube truck that belonged to the Sechelt Fire Department.” They fitted the truck with radios, antennas and even furniture. This became SC SAR’s first mobile command unit.
Almond’s friend Hind-Smith passed away in 2005 and left about $27,000 to SC SAR. Along with grants from the B.C. government and the regional district, they were able to buy another vehicle. A couple of years – and grants – later, Almond said they were able to acquire a building.
Almond has an accomplished history on the Coast. According to SC SAR team leader Robert Allen – who spoke at the appreciation dinner – Almond was a regional district director for Roberts Creek for ten years and chair for three. He’s also the president of the Sunshine Coast Amateur Radio Club, a past member of the Sechelt Garden Club, and a member of the Sunshine Coast Emergency Planning Committee.
After nearly 30 years working with SC SAR and 17 years as the chair, Almond said he is finally ready to settle down, a little.
“It was getting to the point that I was just getting in the way,” Almond said with a smile. “Well, not really, but we’ve got a younger bunch of people in and they’re pretty good. That Search and Rescue, they’re a good group.”
