BC Medic Boss
Provincial Emergency Programme
Provincial Emergency Programme (British Columbia) circa 1976.
The Provincial Emergency Programme (PEP) was the very same entity that was the Provincial Civilian Protection Committee (BC's Civil Defence) of the Second World War
SAR has now come to be associated with all sorts of cool stuff...helicopters and rappelling and hovercraft and boats and all sorts of specialties...Long Line Rescue, Technical Rescue, Confined Space, Swift Water, etc....back then, it was just boots on the ground. If we were lucky, we would get a RCMP Dog Handler from Vancouver after a few days; if we were REALLY lucky, there was a local hunter with his trusty dog. Mostly it was about tromping through really dense bush using the same skills we used to track a deer or a moose. And when we found the poor soul, if he or she was still alive, it was pure Redneck ingenuity that got 'em extricated, and more boots to hump back to wherever base camp was.
The BC Government was directly responsible for wilderness search and rescue - which was the primary mandate of PEP at the time - with volunteers organised locally or regionally, and generally organised into two groups, Rescue or Communications.
The Rescue volunteers, while they had no formal training, were local farmers, hunters, and outdoors enthusiasts who tended to be intimately familiar with the area of operation.
The Communications side was Citizen Band (General Radio Service) operators. There weren't enough Amateur (Ham) operators to make it reliable, and for local communications CB was as good as Ham anyway. Considering the limits of the technology, success was achieved by pure genius and improvisation...for example, there WERE CB repeaters...that was some poor bloke in a 4WD up on a mountain relaying messages....
The Government later moved away from that model to the one that is in place now with local societies or agencies providing the service.
The badge was struck by International Police Equipment Company in Los Angeles. There was some debate about the spelling of "Program" vs "Programme". The former is the American spelling, will the latter was commonly used in Canada at the time. I'm thinking that somebody just missed that when the order was placed....
Provincial Emergency Programme
Provincial Emergency Programme (British Columbia) circa 1976.
The Provincial Emergency Programme (PEP) was the very same entity that was the Provincial Civilian Protection Committee (BC's Civil Defence) of the Second World War
SAR has now come to be associated with all sorts of cool stuff...helicopters and rappelling and hovercraft and boats and all sorts of specialties...Long Line Rescue, Technical Rescue, Confined Space, Swift Water, etc....back then, it was just boots on the ground. If we were lucky, we would get a RCMP Dog Handler from Vancouver after a few days; if we were REALLY lucky, there was a local hunter with his trusty dog. Mostly it was about tromping through really dense bush using the same skills we used to track a deer or a moose. And when we found the poor soul, if he or she was still alive, it was pure Redneck ingenuity that got 'em extricated, and more boots to hump back to wherever base camp was.
The BC Government was directly responsible for wilderness search and rescue - which was the primary mandate of PEP at the time - with volunteers organised locally or regionally, and generally organised into two groups, Rescue or Communications.
The Rescue volunteers, while they had no formal training, were local farmers, hunters, and outdoors enthusiasts who tended to be intimately familiar with the area of operation.
The Communications side was Citizen Band (General Radio Service) operators. There weren't enough Amateur (Ham) operators to make it reliable, and for local communications CB was as good as Ham anyway. Considering the limits of the technology, success was achieved by pure genius and improvisation...for example, there WERE CB repeaters...that was some poor bloke in a 4WD up on a mountain relaying messages....
The Government later moved away from that model to the one that is in place now with local societies or agencies providing the service.
The badge was struck by International Police Equipment Company in Los Angeles. There was some debate about the spelling of "Program" vs "Programme". The former is the American spelling, will the latter was commonly used in Canada at the time. I'm thinking that somebody just missed that when the order was placed....