Lost kids used dad’s teachings to survive

WINNIPEG—It was the sun, a compass, and a cellphone that saved them.
And the wisdom they learned from the father they couldn’t save.

Richard Borlase, 50, passed out while snowmobiling with his children Saturday in the middle of a snowstorm on Lake Winnipeg.
His kids set out for help on the snowmobile they shared, but it got stuck.
So 14-year-old Scott and his sister, Stephanie, 11, burrowed themselves in brush to keep warm while eight snowmobilers took to the lake to find them, said their uncle, Bill Borlase.
Minutes before dark obscured the lake’s south end and night fell, rescuers found the two children.
Rescuers said Scott calculated the direction of the shore using a compass and the sun, and then used his cellphone to describe to Gimli RCMP the area near the shore where their snowmobile foundered.
Mounties then relayed the messages to local snowmobilers familiar with the lake’s terrain.
The children had no physical injuries after they were discharged from hospital last night.
Bill Borlase said the two are tramautized by having to leave their father, who collapsed in the middle of the frozen lake in mid-afternoon.
The children didn’t find out until late yesterday that their father had died, Bill added.
Borlase was vice-chair of Red River College’s board of governors and a prominent certified management accountant who did business consulting services. He regularly rode snowmobiles with his children around their Sandy Hook cottage.
Andrea Cibinel, Borlase’s girlfriend, was grieving yesterday. She said Sunday was their first anniversary.
“I loved him dearly and I loved his kids. And if there was a reason Scott did so well [finding help], it was because his father taught him,” she noted. “He was all about safety and he taught the rules to his kids.
“He would have done anything to secure their safety before his own.”
Both Bill Borlase and Cibinel believed Richard had some health issues.
“[Stephanie and Scott] are suffering some emotional problems, not only with the turmoil and ordeal they went through, but also the loss of their father and the way he passed,” said Bill Borlase.
They plodded through metre-deep snow in damp clothes and used a blanket to keep warm until Derek and Cole Kushnir of Gimli located them.
“It’s like being in a bucket of milk . . . when you get a whiteout on that lake, you can barely see your hand in front of your face,” said Grant Warren, an experienced snowmobiler who fanned out with the others across the lake in search of the youths.
He said finding the children alive was wonderful, but that elation was followed by the “bittersweet” experience of later discovering their father dead.