Wayne Barry is not a man for second-guessing himself. If he somehow ended up back in the same situation in which he found himself last year on Lesser Slave Lake, he would do everything exactly the same.
The 61-year-old owner of Provincial Lathing, a construction business located just north of St. Albert, was out fishing with friends Percy Green and Bill Pryma on June 25, 2009 when the water got pretty rough in unexpected weather.
“The waves got a little bit on the high side. They were three-footers. We decided to head in, and we had a couple miles to get back to where we were heading. As we were coming across the lake getting fairly close to our dock, Percy had noticed something green in the water from behind us. We swung the boat around and I happened to notice two items in the water.”
Those two items were not items after all.
“It ended up being two guys.”
They had been thrown in the water when a sudden storm caused their boat to overturn in the high waves.
“We got one out of the water; it took us some time. The second guy we went back for. We got him. His leg was tied to the bow rope of the boat. We worked pretty hard trying to get him out. We were having problems we didn’t realize at the time. Finally at the very end when we did get him on to the back of the boat, his boat then came right out of the water and it surfaced right beside us.” he said.
When the rescue boat came along, Barry held the man as he clung to the backboard platform. The victims were then taken ashore and brought to the hospital where they both recovered.
For his actions, he was presented with the Governor-General’s Certificate of Commendation at St. Albert City Council. The honour is issued to those people who have made a significant contribution by providing assistance to another person in a selfless manner. More than 100 Certificates of Commendation are handed out every year, with 3,332 given out since its inception in 1993.
‘Selfless’ is a pretty apt description for Barry’s actions that day. When asked if either he or his two friends harboured any reservations about putting their lives in jeopardy to save those two men in the water, he didn’t hesitate with his response.
“We never did. We should have taken a little more caution ourselves to make sure. We didn’t. We just got them out of the water.”
When his sister suggested that he should get an award for his bravery, his first response was to shrug it off.
“I said, ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’ It worked out good and that’s enough of a reward.”
