The Rainy River Mine Rescue Team came out on top at the Ontario Mine Rescue Thunder Bay District Competition earlier this month—the first win for the team since they began competing in 2019.
“It’s an overwhelming feeling,” said Jason St. Onge, coach of this year’s team and Health and Safety Advisor at the Rainy River Mine. “To see a team that’s been trying to snag a win for years finally do it was phenomenal, and I could actually see the energy and drive re-ignite in them.”
Held in Fort Frances, the competition tests teams on various emergency response scenarios including firefighting, first aid, and the use of specialty equipment, with Rainy River ultimately securing the overall win.
“The team has been training like never before,” said Hailey George, Health and Safety Administrator. “For weeks, people were putting in time after hours, going above and beyond, and it paid off.”
Members of the team also secured individual event wins, with Jarid Sandelovich named best individual technician, and a pair of new faces to the team—Tyler Roy and Mitch Hearn—achieving top scores in the written exam. With more than 10 years of mine rescue experience under his belt, Jason says that the key to this year’s success was approaching training with more creativity and customizing it to fit the needs of the team.
“I’ve always found that everyone learns differently, and it’s about adapting training to what works for people,” said Jason. “Doing practice tests over and over started to wear on the team, so I created a mine rescue board game with hundreds of questions that members had fun with while improving their knowledge at the same time.”
Knowledge that, back at the mine, Jason sees as supporting the strong health and safety culture in place at New Gold.
“What we never want to do is to walk by something that’s wrong or hazardous and do nothing about it, and then something happens,” he said. “The skills we learn and the spirit of mine rescue means we bring this mindset back to our site and make our workplaces even safer.”
The win at the district competition secured the team a spot in the provincial competition in Timmins, Ontario in June.
