Body of missing Manitoba boater found in Whiteshell River

A man who went missing while harvesting wild rice on an airboat on the Whiteshell River has been found dead, RCMP say.

The family of Bradley Anderson, 49, was concerned after he didn't return to camp and called RCMP around 9:30 a.m. on Friday. A second boater found the airboat submerged in more than four metres of water, about five kilometers north of Jessica Lake, about 115 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

 A search of the shoreline by police, Manitoba conservation officers and private boats turned up no signs of Anderson.

The family also brought in the Hutterian Emergency Aquatic Response Team (HEART) — a team of divers from the Oak Bluff Hutterite Colony — to help on Friday, but with no success.

RCMP, sustainable development officers and HEART members returned on Saturday, where the Hutterian team found Anderson's body around 10:30 a.m. with an underwater camera, RCMP said.

Anderson's body was recovered, police said.

Family history of harvesting

The man's family is still struggling to grapple with the news of his death.

"It's a very difficult time for them but they're also relieved that the body has been recovered," said Eileen Doerksen, a family spokesperson. Anderson was the brother of her sister-in-law.

Doerksen said Anderson's body was located about six metres from where the submerged boat was found. She said there were no clues as to how he ended up in the water, but said it appears to be an accident.

Anderson, who was from Pinaymootang First Nation, had taken the boat out for a test drive to survey the rice paddies that grow along the river, Doerksen said. The family has been harvesting wild rice in the area for generations.

"It's a tradition for the Ojibwe people to come out to Whiteshell this time of the year to harvest wild rice. So that's what he was taking part in."

While on the water, Anderson went around the corner from the boat launch, where his partner stayed behind. When he didn't return, the family began looking for him, Doerksen said.

"Nobody knows what happened because he was alone over there," she said. "He was out of sight."

The family soon became frustrated by what Doerksen described as a delay in the police's underwater search efforts. She said family members spent the night by the water, where they held a vigil for the missing man Friday evening.

"We told them we were not going to take no for an answer in regards to how long they were going to take to come and do a search," she said. "We didn't get a specialized team. We didn't see any divers there."

Searching the waters

A police dive team supervisor was on the way to survey the site before the body was located, and the full underwater recovery crew was prepared to set out later Saturday evening, RCMP spokesperson Robert Cyrenne said in an email on Saturday afternoon.

When HEART received the call Friday, a team leader said, it was too late in the day to begin a dive, so the search and rescue team did a flyover in the colony's plane to survey the dive site and scour the area.

Paul Maendel said his volunteer crew from HEART arrived on the ground early that rainy Saturday morning. "The water was pretty calm, visibility was good," he said. "There was virtually no current."

The team of five volunteers was able to quickly locate the boat, then used a submersible remotely operated vehicle with a sonar camera and a manipulator arm to recover the body within about 16 minutes — without any divers actually entering the water.

The RCMP investigation is ongoing.