'It's not for everyone, recovering bodies': Volunteer Grandmother's Bay recovery team helps find the missing

Searching to try and recover bodies in rivers never gets easier, "but somebody has to do it," says the leader of the Grandmother's Bay recovery team.

The team is a volunteer-run organization that helps to locate missing persons in water using sonar technology and remote-operated vehicles. Members are from Grandmother's Bay First Nation, just over 400 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, and nearby Stanley Mission.

The team gets about three calls a year and has recently assisted with the search for Sweetgrass Kennedy, who was last seen playing with a group of children on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River on May 10, according to the Prince Albert Police Service. The search for the four-year-old has focused on the North Saskatchewan River.

The remote-operated vehicle they use is less than a metre long, and about a half metre deep. "Probably the size of a suitcase, a small suitcase," said recovery team leader Thompson McKenzie.

Searching for Sweetgrass Kennedy

McKenzie said they were able to locate what he believed was the body of Sweetgrass Kennedy in the North Saskatchewan River using sonar.

"Once that's done, we call in the divers and the Stanley Mission team to recover it," he said. "But the divers weren't able to recover it."

Prince Albert police confirmed sonar technology had seen an object in the water. However, divers were unable to locate it and could not confirm it was Sweetgrass Kennedy.

Search efforts are still underway, although they are reportedly hindered by the swift current and murky waters of the river.

"In a river system like the North Saskatchewan River, where the current is 900 cubic metres per second, the water's too fast for our machine to go in and recover it," McKenzie said.

He said in the North Saskatchewan River, the techniques a recovery team uses are different than in a lake.

"We have to be searching from upriver … of the last seen location, and float our ROV [remote-operated vehicle] down and use our sonar technology," he said.

"On a calm lake we can … operate that vehicle and drive it wherever we want."

Team found body of missing elder

The team started in 2013, after elder Solomon Roberts of Grandmother's Bay went through the ice while on his snowmobile.

After trying river dragging and divers, Leon Charles, who was a Grandmother's Bay counsellor at the time, hired a crew from Washington who had a sonar remote-operated vehicle. The search was unsuccessful, and the band decided to buy the equipment needed and train people on the reserve to operate it.

"We try to help out where we can," said McKenzie, who was part of the original four-person team in Grandmother's Bay.

"We're a volunteer organization and all we ask for when we get called is our meals and our accommodations and our travel to be provided."

The band was able to afford the equipment through bridge funding, or borrowing from other bands and repaying them after receiving a grant from the Northern Lights Community Development Organization.

The vehicle and computer to operate it cost around $90,000 and the tether cables to connect the two cost an average of $4,000 each.

McKenzie, as logistics manager, handles the details for the team. He books hotel rooms, plans travel and food, co-ordinates with people at the search site and prepares equipment so that when there's a call, the team knows the gear is ready.

"When they get to a scene, they can't be bothered with, 'Oh, I need to have a hotel room, I need to have meals, I need to have this and that," McKenzie said.

What we're looking for in the sonar is shadows, shadows that represent objects that are in the water.- Thompson McKenzie

"In most cases, we do locate the person but there's so many other things involved in the search that our expertise is to go in, locate the person, and then step back and let other professionals come in," McKenzie said.

Once they've located a body, divers go in to do the recovery.

"What we're looking for in the sonar is shadows … that represent objects that are in the water, and a human body in the water is totally different from anything that's in the water," McKenzie said.

"And once we locate a target, then we go in with the camera — measure it, videotape it, see where it can be picked up, if there's a belt, if there's anything that can utilize."

The challenges aren't just technical, though.

"It's not for everyone, recovering bodies," McKenzie said.

"When you're looking for a body in the water, it's so emotional that you have to try to sort it out in your mind and a lot of people can't do that," he said.

"When you see a body in the water through the screen, you either freeze up or panic and there's times when you can't do that or you lose your target."

One of the worst things is not finding your relative or your child.- Thompson McKenzie

McKenzie said the team calls the bodies "targets" as a way to think about the search.

He said it helps with searching "because there's so much emotion. There are so many emotions that go through searchers' minds that you need to sort of think of it as something else, but really you know what you're looking for."

For the team leader, it can be emotional dealing with the family members who are affected.

"I'm trying to give them some kind of closure to the incident to help to ease what's happened," McKenzie said. "You can feel the emotion from the families."

After the team was able to find the body of elder Solomon Roberts, McKenzie said they were able to have closure with a funeral and a wake service.

He said of all the people the team has searched for, he was closest to Roberts. But all searches are emotional, he said.

"It gets personal after a while, but then doing what we do, [you] try not to get too personal with the things that happen even though you want to. But it's very emotional, very emotional," said McKenzie.

"One of the worst things is not finding your relative or your child."