Fisher drowns after breaking through thin Lake Manitoba ice

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This article was published 21/11/2022 (1060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A longtime commercial fisher drowned last week, after breaking through thin ice on Lake Manitoba.

The body of John Szklaruk, 70, was found by searchers Nov. 13.

“It’s a sad day for commercial fishermen,” Lake Winnipeg fisher Robert Kristjanson said Monday. “What can you say? There’s nothing you can say.”

Kristjanson said he had first met Szklaruk several years ago, while fishing in the north basin of Lake Winnipeg. “He had a boat out of Dauphin River at one time. His family went back (a generation or more) in fishing.”

On Monday, Gypsumville RCMP said searchers went out on the lake looking for Szklaruk after he failed to return home, and “observed footwear protruding out from the ice.”

Gypsumville is located about 240 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

Christopher Love, water smart and safety management co-ordinator at Lifesaving Society Manitoba, said going on to lake ice carries risk, no matter what time of the year.

Love said when people go on the ice, they should be wearing a life jacket or floatable snowmobile suit, as well as taking other rescue devices (such as rope and ice picks) to help get out of the water in an emergency.

“People say, ‘Why would I bring my life jacket in winter?’ But ice is never 100 per cent safe,” Love said. “Even when you go down a trail on the ice 20 times, the 21st time something might have changed and you go through.”

The most recent reported Manitoba ice-related drownings were in early 2021.

A Grunthal man was snowmobiling in the Whiteshell Provincial Park when he broke through ice on a lake in February. A month later, a man from the Rural Municipality of Alexander died after his all-terrain vehicle went through ice while crossing the Winnipeg River.

Love said it takes at least 10-centimetre-thick ice to hold up a person, 12 cm for a snowmobile or ATV, and 50 cm or more for a semi-trailer.

“You always have to think about what are the conditions and what has the weather been like lately,” he said. “Everybody who goes on the ice should be thinking… ‘What happens if I go through the ice?’”

Szklaruk’s family members, as well as members of the search party, could not be reached for comment Monday.

An obituary, written by Szklaruk’s wife of 48 years and published in the Nov. 19 edition of the Free Press, said the man had a lifetime of experience on the province’s lakes: “The first five winters of his life were spent on Lake Winnipeg, where his parents did commercial fishing.”

By the time Szklaruk was a teenager, he was working on the family farm and construction business. After graduating, he began his own cattle farm, later switching to a grain operation.

Szklaruk continued to do commercial fishing for almost 50 years, first on Lake Manitoba from 1974 to 1989, then Lake Winnipeg from 1989 to 2007, before returning to Lake Manitoba.

According to RCMP, Szklaruk had walked out on to the ice Nov. 13 to go fishing near Fairford. Police were notified at 9:15 p.m. he was overdue. A local search party found his pickup truck near Cook Road, near Highway 6.

Searchers took snowmobiles out on to the lake, heading to where Szklaruk usually went fishing. The search party retrieved the body.

Gypsumville RCMP continue to investigate.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca