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Cynthia Davis and Swing That Thing play Sunday P. 9
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Fat Tire Festival comes to Ladysmith P. 11
Children gather around to watch student field assistant Kevin Robinson (left) and biologist Bruce Cousens band baby Purple Martins during a demonstration at the Ladysmith Maritime Society Community Marina as part of the BC Purple Martin Stewardship and Recovery Program’s ninth annual open house Sunday, July 21. If you missed the open house and would like to learn more about Purple Martins or about the recovery program, visit www. georgiabasin.ca/puma.htm. PHOTO BY LINDSAY CHUNG
Ladysmith family stranded for hours Chris Bush
open gate on a logging road. “We’re new to the area, and THE CHRONICLE we’d heard about the lake up What was supposed to be a there, so we thought that afterquick outing to a back country noon we’d go and try and find lake turned out to be an ordeal it,” Tovey said. “We go through lasting several hours when a this open gate and we thought Ladysmith family found itself we must be getting close to stranded behind a locked log- the beach or whatever. Two or three minutes up the road, this ging road gate on the weekend. Misty Tovey, her three-year- truck passes by us, going the old son and boyfriend thought other way real slow and wavit would be fun to go check out ing and smiling and we wave McKay Lake, located beyond and smile and we acknowledge the end of Spruston Road in the each other. We drive another hills above Cassidy, Saturday two minutes up the road and afternoon, but their short out- there’s this great big gate, so ing ran into a snag when, not we turned around to drive back knowing the area, they missed and they’d locked us in.” Tovey said the other party had the lake and drove through an
been on the road cutting firewood. The driver knew they were there but locked the gate behind him, blocking them in. Tovey, her son and boyfriend were a family in a minivan, she was wearing a dress and it seemed unlikely, she said, that they could have been mistaken for another party out cutting firewood who would have had a key for the gate. “I thought they were smiling to be nice, but I feel more like they were smiling because, ‘Aha, we’re going to lock you in,’” Tovey said. The family tried to find another way out, but when that search proved fruitless, fear-
ing they might run out of fuel, from Nanaimo Lakes who drove they parked the minivan by the out and unlocked the gate. locked gate. “They were so nice to us, and Tovey said she is familiar with they had to drive 40 minutes the bush, and normally, there from their house on a Saturday should be a sign posted on or evening to let us out,” Tovey near a logging road gate warn- said. ing of potential road closures All told, the family was strandafter certain hours and phone ed behind the gate for more numbers people can call for than four hours and an estihelp if they do become stranded mated 10 kilometres from the or want a woodcutting permit. end of Spruston Road. They had She found nothing in the area. food and water, but Tovey’s boyTwo men finally came by who friend has a spine defect that took Tovey’s boyfriend to get would have made hiking out of his car, so the family could at the area difficult if not imposleast drive home. In the mean- sible for him. time, she contacted another Tovey said she wants to warn family member who managed people that this could happen to call two gate security people See Open gate Page 5
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