Clerk saves boys from frigid lake

GARDEN HILL FIRST NATION, Man.—It’s an odd question but everyone’s asking Melody Harper: how cold was the water?
The 35-year-old mother plunged into the remote northern Island Lake on June 24 and pulled out two boys who were floating face down in the water.

Three-year-old Erlin Harper was airlifted to Winnipeg but he was released and returned Wednesday to Garden Hill, 980 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
“I got him to shore and that’s when I started giving him mouth to mouth,” said Melody Harper, who was on a day off from her clerk job at the Island Lake RCMP detachment.
“I kept at it until finally there was a little bit of water that started coming out of his mouth and nose. I knew it was working and he’d be all right.”
Erlin’s brother Stephan Harper, four, came to on his own, almost instantly, as soon as Harper and her daughter, Kalvina, 12, pulled him ashore.
“I didn’t have time to think if it was cold or not,” Harper said.