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Volunteers are immersed in cold water. Photo Credit: Ted Rankine

Cold Water Boot Camp: If Darcy St. Laurent can drown in cold water – so can you

Ted Rankine, Play Safe Productions

Meet Darcy St. Laurent. He is a highly decorated veteran of the Canadian military (Star of Courage and Medal of Bravery). He has been a combat engineer, combat diver, army parachutist, explosive ordnance disposal technician and a UN Peace Keeper in Cambodia and Bosnia. He also currently is a Search and Rescue technician and a key team member for the North Pole leg of Save the Poles 2010, an unprecedented journey to the top, bottom and roof of the world to create awareness of global warming, advocate strategies for reducing carbon emission and collect relevant scientific data for scientists to study how we need to make changes.

Darcy was one of nine Canadians who volunteered for a very special mission. It wasn’t going to be classified or covert, but rather it was a mission that would be publicized to millions of Canadians. The mission was to swim the cold waters of Lake Simcoe in late April, just after the ice melted. The project was called Cold Water Boot Camp.

Cold Water Boot Camp was developed to help educate the public about the risks of cold water immersion. It was designed to recruit a handful of tough volunteers who knew something about cold water and see just how they would react to spending time in it. The expectation was that regardless of your knowledge, experience or fitness, the common denominator to surviving a dip in cold water was wearing a lifejacket.

Darcy was joined by other volunteers from across the country. They included Mike Brako, a marine enforcement officer with the city of Winnipeg, Alice Musto, who worked on the west coast at a yacht charter business in Comox, B.C., Ryan Lewis, a police officer in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Eric Cartlidge, a sailing instructor (among other duties) with Ontario Sailing, Krista deShane with the CCG, Central and Arctic Region whose headquarter is in Sarnia, Ontario, Antoine Ouellon with the Lifesaving Society, Montréal, Ginette Traversy, a firefighter and outdoor educator from Edmonton and Chris Berneche, a CCG rescue specialist from Belleville, Ontario.

A volunteer of Cold Water Boot Camp is taken out of the water by trained personnel. Photo Credit: Ted Rankine

At the center of the boot camp activities was Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht, (aka Professor Popsicle), Professor of Thermophysiology at the University of Manitoba. He is a world renowned expert in cold water immersion, who provided valuable information and insights into the effects of cold water as the boot campers experienced it first hand.

The water temperature for Cold Water Boot Camp was a balmy seven degrees celcius and over two days, the boot campers got wet and cold as they demonstrated what happens to smart, fit individuals if they find themselves in cold water. They were tasked with a variety of exercises that included a “swim until you fail”, cold incapacitation tests and comparative swimming between individuals (with and without lifejackets). Two of the boot campers, Eric and Antoine, stayed in the icy water for almost an hour to experience and demonstrate the effects of mild hypothermia.

In addition to the water activities, Dr. Giesbrecht conducted a classroom session to better inform the boot campers about what they were experiencing, and provide some valuable information about how to better survive an icy immersion. Part of that education included breaking the age old myth of how long it takes to become hypothermic. Many believe that it takes only five to ten minutes to become hypothermic, but in fact it takes much longer. It is not necessarily hypothermia that it the cause of death, but some of the first effects of cold water immersion.

In the classroom, Dr. Giesbrecht presented his 1-10-1 Principle, which categorizes exactly what happens when people are immersed in cold water.

However, Cold Water Boot Camp doesn’t end on the water. The results will be put into a half hour television special that can best be described as Fear Factor meets MythBusters. Cable networks across Canada are enthusiastic about carrying the production (both in French and English) and broadcast will start in the fall of 2008 and continue through 2009. A Web site (www.coldwaterbootcamp.com) is also part of the project with a lot of information and streaming video. DVD copies are available, on the above-mentioned Web site, for the 30 minute version of the television special, along with a shorter version created for classroom use and four interstitials - short editorials on specific cold water immersion subjects suitable for trade show booth use, classroom, etc.

Cold Water Boot Camp is part of the National Search and Rescue Secretariat’s New Initiatives Fund and was created in partnership with Transport Canada’s Office of Boating Safety, the Canadian Safe Boating Council, Play Safe Productions and a variety of other organizations, including the Canadian Coast Guard, Central and Arctic Region, the Ontario Provincial Police, Helly Hansen, Rescue 7, York Region Police Marine Unit, Georgina Fire and Rescue and York Region’s Emergency Medical Services, to mention just a few.

Of particular note is the contribution of one partner: the Lifesaving Society. It has produced a cold water poster that has been placed in malls, transit shelters and other outdoor media venues. It was designed to deliver a cold water immersion safety message (wear your lifejacket) and promote visitation to the Web site. Initially starting in Ontario, the seed capital planted by the Lifesaving Society for the project was topped up by their partner Pattison Outdoor, and along with other Lifesaving Society regional offices, has expanded to other areas across Canada. It is expected that by the end of the year, the outdoor media space for the poster delivering a cold water message will be well in excess of half a million dollars.

Ted Rankine is the catalyst behind Cold Water Boot Camp. His company, Play Safe Productions, specializes in innovative ways to communicate safety. An active member of the Canadian Safe Boating Council, Ted is past Chairman, manager of the CSBC Safe Boating Week Campaign and serves in a variety of committees.

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