Several times in my career, despite my belief that I held my own personal safety as my highest priority, I made some really dumb decisions. Now I firmly believe that whenever I came to those decisions they made perfect sense and it was only after events unfolded, or even after they failed to unfold as they could have, I’d stop and think “What in god’s name was I thinking!”.
I was working in Fort Providence, and my partner at the time, James, was a ball of fun working with. He’s one of those guys that always has the snappy lines, and also greatly enjoyed being a member. We had fun. In a prelude to what happened that day, we had another minor firearm incident, which just begs to be told.
We had been working night shift, and if memory serves me correctly, we were the only two members in Fort Providence, the Corporal not having arrived yet after the previous Corporal’s transfer. We were in the office when one of the residents called to complain about sporadic gunfire in the bush behind her residence. When we went to see her (she lived at the edge of town), she told us she’d heard a .22 being fired from time to time in the woods out back. Not very many shots, but they’d happened over a long period of time. She suspected some kids playing with a rifle.
It was dark and quiet, and we stood at edge of bush for sometime listening but could hear nothing. So we headed down a path into the dark woods. As we went farther down the path, the path became wetter and wetter until we were having a hard time finding out where to put our feet. We weren’t using our flashlights because we didn’t want who ever had the .22 to know we were coming. As we got to a fork in the path we began to hear the voices of two or three youths, somewhere almost directly in the middle of the directions the forks in the path took. I went one way, James the other.
I had probably only gone about 10 feet when my path dried out and I was able to make better time. Soon I was at the edge of an opening and could hear the voices, and a fire directly in front of me but I could see nothing….
It wasn’t that dark! I could see right across this opening, I should be able to see a fire and I just couldn’t figure out what was going on. Finally I saw a spark and a bit of light and made out a small fort made out of spruce boughs. Well made. I got to the edge of it and it was obvious that there was a small stove and a Coleman lantern inside but it was almost light tight. It was large and made in the shape of an “L” and as I moved around it I could see the light coming out of the open door at the foot of the “L”.
I still didn’t know where James was, and was still trying not to betray my presence so I dropped down onto my hands and knees and crawled through the door. Inside there were three rather startled looking youths, one of which was holding a .22 by the barrel, his hand nowhere near the trigger. So I said to him, “Hi there, want to give me that rifle?”. He nodded, and tipped the rifle to me so I could grab it, but he tipped it so that the barrel was pointed right at me. So I said “Don’t point that at me.” and as he began to tip it away from my head the side of the fort exploded and James appeared as if out of nowhere, handgun drawn and pointed at the youth’s head yelling “Drop the gun.” Well actually I think he added a couple of words in there, but if I thought the youths looked startled when I entered the fort it was nothing compared to their look after James’ entrance.
Imagine that you are James for a minute. James, had also made his way along his path to the clearing, arriving a little after I did, and was just as puzzled as I was at what he saw, or rather couldn’t see. He had just made his way to the side of the fort when he heard me inside. And with none of the visual clues that I had this is what he heard “Hi there, want to give me that rifle? Don’t point that at me!” James ripped through the wall in an instant.
So some time later, when another call came in about shots being fired in the bush, James and I were ready…
to be continued…
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7 responses
Kids, rifle, confined space …scarier stuff!
I don’t know the law, especially up there in Canada, but was what the boys were doing illegal?
Pablo,
Pretty much. Although it was in bush, the area they were in was still part of the Hamlet and there are laws against using firearms in town and other built up areas. There are careless use provisions etc. Mostly we just wanted to remove any threats to safety. These were pretty young kids (children under 12 can not possess firearms without a parent present) but I can’t remember their ages. The firearm was seized and returned to the adult who owned it.
Also, interestingly enough, shortly after this we had a Break and Enter at the Hamlet office and several thousand dollars stolen. We recovered part of the stolen goods hidden in this same fort, under spruce boughs on the floor. (And some down in the pit of an outhouse… I don’t want to talk about it.)
Clare,
Was this before I even worked with u guys for the summer?
Hi Sabrina,
It was probably that spring, or early in the summer before you started (I’d have to check my notes and they’re in storage). I don’t think Rod had arrived yet.
Good story…on to part three now.