A local woman says she may have seen the distress flares fired by a sailor the night he vanished on Lake Erie. But when she reported the incident to the Canadian Coast Guard, she says she wasn’t taken seriously.
Reginald Fisher, of Dutton, Ontario, went missing Sept. 17 after he didn’t return from his sailing trip. Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) recovered his abandoned sailboat the next day but saw no sign of the 77-year-old.
Rosemary Mitton, who owns a cottage on the north shore of Lake Erie not far from Rondeau Provincial Park, said she might have seen Fisher’s flares that night.
“I didn’t take note of the time, I didn’t expect it to be any big deal,” said Mitton. “And when I went down, I saw the end of a flare, and it was lighting up the water — significantly reflecting on the water.”
The 66-year-old woman quickly went back into the house to find the 1-800 number for the Canadian Coast Guard to report what she saw.
“I spoke to a French Canadian man, and I told him we were on the north shore of Lake Erie, we were at Rondeau and that I was seeing a flare on the lake. It was West of Clearville, but it was east of Rondeau. It was well within the horizon, and the lake was flat.”
Mitton said the man on the phone asked her what colour the flare was. Mitton began to explain the colour of the flare. She described it as the colour of fire, an orangey-red with a tint of gold.
“He said, ‘Oh no, there’s nobody out there. That’s our flares,’” said Mitton. “He was so convinced that it was his own.”
Simultaneously, as Mitton called in her sighting, a coast guard rescue operation was happening somewhere near Port Burwell, Ontario.
Mitton consoled herself and went to bed.
As she recalls, that night, the wind changed to the northeast.
“It was a very, very rough lake — wild. I thought if there’s anybody out there, they’re not going to make it now,” said Mitton.
The Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ontario, said it received word that a boat was in distress and taking on water near Port Burwell. A CC-130 Hercules aircraft was sent to provide illumination support by dropping parachute flares in the area on the night of Sept. 17. A coast guard vessel then escorted the limping ship back to Port Burwell, where all occupants safely returned to shore.
But Fisher never did.
“I think what it was was a sad coincidence that we had a person in distress sending up flares, and they had somebody in Port Burwell that they were dropping to,” Mitton said.
“Two sets of flares on the same night on a calm lake. It would be highly unusual.”
Mitton and her husband Craig have lived on the lake for 46 years. She knew Bort Burwell was 80 miles away and could not be seen.
That night, as she spoke to a coast guard official on the phone, Mitton said she kept insisting she knew what she saw. However, she felt she was not taken seriously.
“We can’t see Port Burwell from here. We’re in a little cove down here. I had my charts up on my computer. I told him that there were an Algoma freighter and a dark freighter about the shipping channel. But there was nothing else on our screen,” said Mitton.
She added the man on the phone was unfamiliar with the water.
“Maybe he didn’t look at a chart. He was so convinced the flare was his own,” said Mitton.
More than a week after Fisher’s death, Mitton can’t help but wonder what more she could have done to help
She recalls many instances throughout the 46 years she has lived near the water where she was able to help people.
“We know the water. We have an aluminum boat on the shore, which we have launched many times to bring people in who went out too far on an inner tube or, they were inexperienced sailors,” said Mitton.
She doesn’t have a lighthouse, there’s no harbour master, and it was too dark to go out in the aluminum boat as she doesn’t have searchlights.
But this time around, despite her attempts, and numerous calls from neighbours, a life was taken by Lake Erie.
“If the Coast Guard doesn’t believe us, and the 9-1-1 calls that were made, and they don’t believe us, then whom do we call? Who would believe us?” questioned Mitton. “Time is of the essence.”
Bird Bouchard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Ridgetown Independent News
