Northerners honoured at Rideau Hall for volunteering, leadership

Three northerners received medals from Canada's governor general at Rideau Hall Thursday recognizing their outstanding volunteer contributions: from search and rescue, to Arctic candy drops, to breaking trails for mountain bikers.

Governor General Julie Payette awarded Yellowknife's David Taylor the Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers for his role in recruiting, training and leading countless air searches over a vast region of boreal forest and tundra with the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA). 

Taylor, 58, started out as a spotter, scanning the wilderness in a grid pattern from the back seat of a plane looking for any sign of movement or life. He became a navigator and eventually the CASARA Zone Commander and training officer for the Northwest Territories, a huge job given the constant turnover of volunteers.

Why has Taylor kept at it for 25 years? From the start, he says, "it was more than a volunteer activity, it was an adventure."

Those adventures included finding a lost hunter holed up in a snowbank after two days, several hundred kilometres from the nearest community.

"If we hadn't found him when we did, well, it wouldn't have turned out so well," Taylor said.

Kuujjuaq's Santa Claus

Renowned Inuit bush pilot Johnny May also received the Sovereign's Medal for bringing happiness to Kuujjuaq in Northern Quebec with his annual Christmas candy drop.

For more than 50 years, May has swooped over his hometown every Christmas Day, dropping candies and small gifts for everyone waiting below. His family has to postpone Christmas dinner until after his delivery is done, but he says it's worth it.

May remembers how the Hudson's Bay Company used to have candy and games for Inuit at Christmas, and how his father used to get up on the roof and throw candies to families that had come in by dog team.

When May got his pilot's licence, he thought it would be fun to try it from an airplane.

Transport Canada gave May a special waiver that allows him to fly below a certain altitude and throw things out of an aircraft, the only licence of its kind in Canada.

Blazing trail for Yukon mountain bikers

Sierra van der Meer from Whitehorse was also recognized at Rideau Hall for her leadership of the Contagious Mountain Bike Club.

Van der Meer started volunteering for the club 10 years ago, even before she started biking. Some years, she put in hundreds of hours, especially during her maternity leave with her first son.

"We would go out together all summer and build trail," said van der Meer. "I'd bring him to the start of races and put him in a little pack 'n play beside the race start, or wrap him up in my shirt and go de-flag race courses. It was really fun."

Van der Meer takes the most pride in the relationships she built with other Whitehorse organizations that maintain trail systems, like the Whitehorse Cross Country Ski Club and the Klondike Snowmobile Association.

There can be tensions between competing users, but van der Meer found a diplomatic way to bring everyone together. "We all share a passion for the outdoors and a love of the environment we live in," she says. "We don't have to be at war."

Van der Meer says volunteers are the foundation for the entire sport of mountain biking. "I can count on all my fingers all the other people who could be getting this award, who are just as deserving."