Police divers recover body of missing Lake of the Woods ice fisher

Winnipeg Police Service divers have found the body of a 71-year-old man whose off-road vehicle went through the ice on Lake of the Woods last week.

RCMP were contacted about a missing 71-year-old man from Buffalo Point First Nation shortly before 9 p.m. on Dec. 16. He had driven to his ice-fishing shack on Buffalo Bay, near Manitoba’s borders with Ontario and Minnesota, in a side-by-side utility-terrain vehicle earlier that day.

The shack is about five kilometres north of the Buffalo Point marina, RCMP said last week.

Mounties could not search the ice due to the conditions that night. Using a drone the next day, they found tracks headed to the shack and then to a pressure ridge — a pileup of ice fragments.

RCMP called in Winnipeg police to assist, as the Mounties’ dive team had already deployed north to search for two others who were presumed dead after their truck went through ice on Cedar Lake last week.

WPS divers recovered the man’s body on Friday.