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They rallied round fires in hiking mini-ordeals
Daily Colonist14 November 1978p. 11Before 1979
“They rallied round fires in hiking mini-ordeals”, Daily Colonist, p. 11, 14 November 1978 licence unknown
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Summary
A Sunday afternoon hike turned into a chilling experience for nine people in two separate parties in East Sooke Park when nightfall caught them still far from their destination, forcing them to huddle around campfires for the night. For at least one of the groups the night, despite the freezing temperatures, was not much of an ordeal. Larry Slaght was surprised when a search party organized by Colwood RCMP came across him, his wife Jeana, their two daughters Sheila and Sandra, both in their twenties, and a Vancouver man, Mike Leask, at about 5:30 a.m. on the Monday. "We didn't really require [assistance]," the Transport Canada district manager said in a Monday telephone interview from his Falkland [Avenue] home; they were all warmly dressed, had made a good fire and had taken food along.
Details
| Headline | “They rallied round fires in hiking mini-ordeals” |
|---|---|
| Publication | Daily Colonist |
| Date | 14 November 1978 |
| Page | 11 |
| Era | Before 1979 |
| Document type | news report |
| Original article | Internet Archive — the Daily Colonist, November 14, 1978, page 11 ↗ |
| Source | britishcolonist.ca (University of Victoria) |
| Accessed | 2026-08-04 |
| Licensing | licence unknown |
| Record confidence | confirmed |
Archivist's note
The earliest East Sooke Park incident in the archive, and the first to involve more than one lost party at once - a pattern that recurs across the modern record. The search party is organized by Colwood RCMP; no Sooke search and rescue body is named, one year before the 1979 Victoria Times article that first names a Sooke Search and Rescue team.
The clipping
