The unforgiving river

Search for three Labrador college students continues

By Kenny Sharpe

The search for three young college students in Labrador has switched from rescue to recovery following an incident on the Muskrat Falls region of the Churchill River.

The three boys, aged 18 and 19, were all students of The College of the North Atlantic’s Happy Valley Goose-Bay campus, enrolled in the Millwright program, and were set to graduate on May 21.

On Tuesday May 18, a witness reported seeing all three boys jump from their canoe as it approached Muskrat Falls, an area of the river known not for being a towering waterfall, but for its turbulent rapids and wide ranging water levels.

Since the boys went missing, RCMP and search and rescue teams have recovered a pair of sneakers and parts of an aluminum canoe, believed to be the same canoe that the boys were navigating.

As word of the tragedy began to bounce from one isolated Labrador community to the next, family and friends were forced to accept their knotting emotions and cling to any memories of the boys which they may have had.

Those memories, along with condolences, pictures, and stories surfaced almost instantly on the internet, as Facebook groups were created to honour the lives of Ryan Russell, Randy Rose, and Roy Sainsbury: three young men from various communities in Labrador.

“This is such a small world and we are all connected in some way or another. My prayers are with you and your families at this sad time. May god bless you all,” read one wall post in a Facebook group dedicated to Roy Sainsbury.

Facebook has also enabled strangers to share their condolences and support. “I didn’t know these young men but from their photos they look like they were so full of life …as a parent of three children my heart is heavy for their families…”

Winnie Montague is the campus administrator at the College of the North Atlantic in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and says something of this nature is extremely difficult to deal with, especially when the campus has a small student population of approximately 300.

“It is quite a devastating time here in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, as you could imagine, and particularly here at the campus.”

Kim Morris is the principal at Henry Gordon Academy in Cartwright, the same school that Roy Sainsbury attended. Morris echoed the same message.

“And of course, being a very small community and a very small school—we only have 81 students from kindergarten through grade 12—you know everybody knows everybody very well.”

Morris taught Roy Sainsbury in elementary school until she assumed the role of principal at the academy in 1999. Morris says Sainsbury was your typical, naturally born achiever, “He was student council president, he was the sergeant of the ACR patrol, he was the type of person who was in all the leadership roles that come with being a great kid.”

Both Morris and Montague say classes have resumed at both the college and the academy, at the request of those students seeking some type of normalcy in trying to cope.

The search for the three missing boys was suspended this weekend due to high water levels and is set to resume later this week.

As for the site where the boys were last seen, Morris calls it “the river that is very unforgiving.”

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