Another military exercise will be taking place this week in the region, this time with the Canadian Rangers at Rinker Lake, north of Thunder Bay.
As Major John McNeil explains Exercise Ranger Tracker will focus on search and rescue techniques to help support police services, such as the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police in the far North.
“Most of their activity is localized in the community so when people get lost or become injured outside of the communities the ability for the police to project outside are very limited.”
Additionally the exercise will confirm and expand the capabilities of the Canadian Rangers for other domestic response operations to support other local and provincial emergency agencies beyond just the police services.
McNeil notes having community members from those communities who are also members of the Canadian Rangers builds a better relationship between the Indigenous population, the armed forces and police services.
40 members of the Canadian Rangers will be participating in the exercise which will involve members involved in small party activities which includes them being mounted to all-terrain vehicles.
“They’re be doing search activities. So our scenarios are based on incidents, accidents, lost person behavior, and sometimes casualty management depending on the situation. So it’s a whole variety of activities that they could potentially address while they’re in their home communities in the North.”
Canadian Rangers are an easily identifiable branch of the Canadian Armed Forces with very distinctive uniforms which consist of a red hoodie and red baseball cap or toque.
Due to it being hunting season they will also be wearing hunter orange vests, and hunters are asked to be aware of the participants.
It being hunting season also has impacted the number of participants according to McNeil as many members are participating in their traditional hunts, but organizers have adapted.
“It does allow us to put more emphasis on not only the search activities but the management, the planning of it and the safe execution of these activities. Over the years we’ve morphed from the military guys acting as search managers and launching the Rangers out the door, to now having them having the capacity and capability to run and conduct their own activities.”
Exercise Ranger Tracker will run for five days and will culminate with a large scale day and night activity, which will involve signal flares and fires.
In Ontario there are approximately 700 members of the Canadian Rangers in 29 First Nation communities, all but three being located North of the Trans-Canada Highway, many being fly in only.
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