When Murray Saunders got a warm hug from the relative of a man he and his daughter saved off Blue Point, the thought that was all the thanks he would get.
But Saunders and his nine-year-old daughter Haley were doubly honoured, first as one of the people in Plympton-Wyoming acknowledged by Mayor Lonny Napper for their community service and secondly by the Canadian Red Cross Society for saving the man’s life.
The pair was jet skiing last summer when they saw an empty machine in the water. Haley then spotted a man in the water. Dave McCarly had fallen off and was having a hard time. By the time the Saunders got to him, he was gray.
“We were lucky to be in the right place at the right time,” Murray Saunders told about 250 at the Mayor’s Appreciation Lunch. “If we had been going out 10 minutes later, it would have been different.”
A few minutes after the man was taken to hospital, Saunders was approached by his nephew who “gave me a hug, I thought that was the end of it.”
Also honoured were long-time members of the Royal Canadian Legion Auxiliary, teachers, long-time leaders in the fire department, and other volunteers who organized a benefit for a volunteer with a rare blood disorder.
And there was also those who wondered why they were there, like Rob Stewardson, who gathered together to build an outdoor ice rink.
“I don’t know why I’m getting this. There are people here who saved lives. I built an ice rink,” he says. But what seemed like a small thing could have helped many as one of Stewardson heard from one of his friends. “Your rink has the potential to save a lot of lives,” the man said noting without something to do outside, kids can get into a lot of trouble.