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Fast-acting couple save man from waters of Sargeant Bay

A local man may owe his life to a couple’s unscheduled visit to the beach and a canoe left on the shore.
rescue
Brian Nason (far right) and his wife Debbie celebrating Brian’s rescue from the waters of Sargeant Bay with his rescuers Carissa Kearney and Mitchell Silvey.

A local man may owe his life to a couple’s unscheduled visit to the beach and a canoe left on the shore.

Brian Nason went out in a small aluminum boat around 3:30 Sunday afternoon to check the crab traps he’d placed about 300 metres out in Sargeant Bay.

The weather was good and the water was calm.

He was manoeuvring the rope on one of the traps into the roller at the stern of the boat and was moving to the centre seat when things went wrong. 

“All of a sudden I was in the water. It happened so fast,” Nason recalled during a celebratory lunch with his rescuers at Ricky’s in Sechelt on Monday. “I went under and pulled [the cord on] my inflatable PFD. It filled up, and I started to backstroke toward shore. I got 40 or 50 feet and I started to slow down. The tide was going against me.”

By that time Nason’s boat had sunk.

His wife, Debbie Nason, was watching from shore and had just taken a picture of the scene with her iPad. “I looked away and then I heard a holler. I looked [back] and I saw the boat was kind of tilted and he wasn’t in it.”

Nason didn’t have a cell phone with her, so as soon as she realized what was happening she ran up to a man who was getting into his car to leave the parking lot, and asked him phone 911.

She also yelled out to Brian that help was on the way and stayed on the line shouting instructions that were being passed along by the 911 dispatcher.

Down on the beach, Mitchell Silvey and Carissa Kearney had been standing on the shore skipping stones. The pair wasn’t planning to go to the beach that day, but decided to stop by on their way to the store.

Kearney saw Brian Nason go overboard.

“We also heard the shouting,” Silvey told Coast Reporter.

Luck was with Nason and his would-be rescuers, because someone had left a canoe, with a rope, paddles and lifejackets beached nearby. 

Silvey and Kearney got into the canoe and started paddling furiously to reach Nason.

By this time, according to Nason, he’d started to tire, and he said it was impossible for him to hear the instructions that Debbie was shouting from the shore.

“I said a quick prayer, and looked over to the side and saw the kids coming in a canoe.”

Kearney said they knew they shouldn’t try to pull Nason into the canoe, so they threw him the rope and when he was able to grab hold they started paddling back to shore.

Kearney said Silvey kept his cool and was calmly giving instructions throughout the half hour it took to bring Nason to safety, something Silvey puts down to his emergency response training with the Pender Harbour Volunteer Fire Department.

“The ambulance was already there by the time we got him to shore,” Kearney said.

Debbie Nason added that a boat that had answered a Coast Guard broadcast for assistance had also arrived by then and other bystanders were ready with coats and blankets at the parking lot.

Nason said he was showing symptoms of hypothermia when he was taken by ambulance to Sechelt Hospital around 4 p.m.

The Nasons said they have a lot of people to thank, including Kale, the man who loaned the cell phone, Colleen who also called to report the incident, and Jeff and Kevin, the paramedics.

But Debbie Nason said Silvey and Kearney were real heroes. “Willing to risk their lives out there on the cold water in a canoe. And to think so fast on their feet like that in a compassionate act that saved my husband’s life.”

“I never would have made it if it wasn’t for them – I know that,” added Brian, who also said if it wasn’t for Debbie first noticing he’d gone overboard, the story would have ended differently.

Kearney said she’s still in shock and the full impact of what she and Silvey did hasn’t really hit her yet. 

“I think anybody would have done the same thing if they saw what we saw, and had that canoe there,” Silvey said.