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Junior members pick up marine training, experience

Program provides teens with solid grounding for future career
SAR
RCMP Const. Adrian White (left) was RCMSAR Gibsons’ first junior member (photo supplied). Kamilla Hindmarch and Jordan Grisewood are the Gibsons station’s newest members as part of the RCMSAR Junior Program.

The Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue (RCMSAR) Station 14 Gibsons has welcomed their two newest members, Kamilla Hindmarch and Jordan Grisewood.

For the past two years, funding from the Sunshine Coast Credit Union has enabled senior high school students to receive training in marine search and rescue through the RCMSAR Junior Member Program. The program provides opportunities for youth aged 17 to 19 to gain training and experience, as well as develop their leadership and team-building skills, while participating in a vital emergency response service to the community.

Hindmarch, 18, has just graduated from Chatelech Secondary School and wants to give back to her home town of Gibsons. She learned to sail a Laser at a young age, and was a volunteer instructor with the Gibsons Sailing Club. Now, she is looking forward to building her marine portfolio by learning to operate and navigate the SAR14 rigid hull inflatable (RHIB) fast rescue craft.

“I love anything to do with the ocean,” Hindmarch says. “Having that training would be super beneficial.” Her immediate plan is to go to the University of Victoria to study marine sciences. But she plans to stay with the Gibsons station during her education. “I like the idea that I can go away to university and then come home and start back again.”

Grisewood was also looking for a way to turn his lifelong interest in boating into a way to volunteer in his community. “I’m a boater, so I thought it would be good to give back by helping other boaters.”

At 18, Grisewood has already acquired a lot of the experience and credentials of a seasoned mariner. A water enthusiast from an early age, he completed Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion lifesaving courses before moving on complete the Small Vessel Operator Proficiency course and marine radio certification (ROC-M). His future goal is to get his 60 Tonne Licence, and thought being a volunteer with the RCMSAR Junior program would be a good grounding for his career.

That was certainly the beginning of the varied and successful career path of Gibsons’ first junior member, Adrian White. Now a constable with the RCMP, White recalls that in 2001 there was no such thing as junior membership when he showed up as a Grade 10 student at the door of the Gibsons Coast Guard Auxiliary, as it was then known. Steve Sawyer was the unit leader at the time, and told him that, at 16, he was too young. That was not enough to deter Adrian, and he describes how he just kept showing up until Sawyer and then Training Officer Mark Stipec decided to give him a try.

White stayed with the Gibsons station until he was 21. During that time he got hired on by BC Ferries and credits his Coast Guard Auxiliary experience with helping him get his foot in the door. At 21 he left the ferries and joined the coast guard. He spent the next six years working at search and rescue bases up and down the West Coast, including a stint as coxswain, running a coast guard base. He also became a paramedic with BC Ambulance, and spent the next five years alternating between coast guard and EMS shifts. He then made yet another change in his professional trajectory and joined the RCMP, a goal he had kept in the back of his mind since he was a teenager.

White says there are strong links between his various professions. Today he works with the Sunshine Coast RCMP and is also vessel coordinator for the detachment, overseeing the activities carried out on the unit’s RHIB, Orca.

He says he is grateful for the start he got all those years ago as young volunteer with marine search and rescue. “Coming into the program gave me a sense of community and camaraderie. It gave me an opportunity to take courses and network in the field that I had interest in, and gave me a good foundation to go out in the workforce at age 19 and land the job that I wanted.”

– By Tess Huntly, Coxswain and Training Officer, RCMSAR 14 Gibsons