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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Man died a hero: family
Believe he tried to rescue friends
IT'S not enough to ease the pain Don Kantimere is going through, but at least he knows his big brother was doing all he could to rescue his friends.
"Why he was out there, only the four of them know," Kantimere said at his apartment in Southdale Monday. "The OPP did give us some answers."
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The grieving Kantimeres think their brother was safe on shore when he saw his friends get into trouble out on the ice and he went to get them.
"He wasn't with them when they went through. My brother went to go to save them. He didn't go down with them. He went out to save them and eventually, he came up with too much water in his lungs," said Don.
They said they can only imagine the effort it took for their tall, lanky brother to haul himself out of the water and onto the ice.
"What we do know is enough to live with," Don said.
What the Ontario Provincial Police have told the Kantimeres is a trapper discovered Robert Kantimere's four-by-four Jeep idling, engine purring at the end of a dirt track through the bush. The man's jacket and boots looked like they were pulled off in a hurry. When the trapper looked out on the lake, he saw the still figure of a man lying face down on the ice.
The Kantimere family, eight brothers and sisters, will return to Kenora Saturday for a service at a local funeral home.
They want to meet their brother's friends and the people in Kenora where he lived for the past 30 years.
In Kenora Monday, a close friend of victim Edward Everson said Everson was well-liked, the father of five children from a former marriage and five grandchildren.
"He was one of the kindest, gentlest men you'll ever meet," the friend said. "He had many friends."
In a statement issued Monday night, Everson's family described him as a great outdoorsman who would "give you his shirt off his back, even if it meant he had nothing."
"He will be greatly missed,'' the family said.
For the Kantimere family in Winnipeg, talking about what happened to their brother was a way to share a warning.
"You hear these stories on the news; these families losing relatives on the ice and you wonder, 'How could that happen?' There's nothing that valuable out there on the ice that's worth your life," said Ken Kantimere, one of Robert's brothers.
"This could help another family, to prevent a tragedy."
Don and his brother Ken paused, eyes wet with tears as they pieced together the last hours of his life with his friends.
Their brother, who everyone called by his lifelong nickname Boo, was an avid fisherman and keen outdoorsman.
Boo was ranked as a champion bass fisher and some of his proudest memories were being out on northern Ontario lakes with celebrity fishermen from TV fishing shows.
The Kantimere brothers said Thursday was a day off for Boo from his job at McDiarmid Lumber. He and his friend, Otto, who also took the day off from work, got together with the two other men.
The four packed up Boo's Jeep for a day out in the country, north of town. They were away by 7 a.m.
Otto had a trailer in the bush near Selkirk Lake and the witnesses later told OPP the group had been spotted heading north.
"The ice on the road was probably still hard when they went out," said Don.
By midday, when Ontario Provincial Police were busy staging a search at the site, the road wasn't frozen anymore.
One officer at the scene told Don the authorities were using quads to get through the slushy muck on shore.
The ice on the lake was so thin by 1 p.m. when Kantimere's body was recovered, it took a helicopter to airlift the body up from the ice, Don said.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 27, 2012 A3
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