This weekend, we had a very, very significant scare in Sault Ste. Marie. On Friday, May 12, a grade 6 class from Holy Cross Catholic School in Sault Ste. Marie had a day planned at St. Kateri Outdoor Learning Centre. St. Kateri is located on the outskirts of Sault Ste. Marie near Nettleton Lake. Myself, my kids and just about every single kid in Sault Ste. Marie has visited St. Kateri. It used to be called Camp Korah. It’s a place where all classes go for field trips in those younger elementary school ages.

Eleven-year-old Ruby Kerr was one of those grade 6 students on Friday. At 11 a.m. that day, she went missing from St. Kateri. An intense search effort began immediately. I even had occasion to deal with it in some capacity as a result of having coached against her in soccer. I was involved with family and coaches with respect to—there was just a massive search, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have a lot of time to go through it but to say that it impacted us all in our community greatly.

I was on the sidelines of the soccer field coaching my oldest son and middle son when her coach came to me and stopped me on the sidelines at half-time to tell me, thankfully, that Ruby had just been found. I really want to place a huge thank you to Sault Ste. Marie Police and the Ontario Provincial Police, especially their aerial helicopter pilots, who helped discover Ruby by just the miraculous finding of a footprint, which became the lead that located her almost 10 kilometres away from Camp Kateri, where she walked through the night.

Beyond the blisters on her feet and scrapes all over her legs and a very, very long, scary night, she was able to be reunited with her mom and dad almost 24 hours after going missing.