N.S. ground search and rescue teams look for money and missing persons

A longtime Nova Scotia search and rescue volunteer says she would prefer her team spend less time fundraising and more time training. 

Sherry Veinot, head of Lunenburg County Ground Search and Rescue, said her group conducts five or six fundraisers a year, including a yard sale, summer car show and roadside garbage cleanup. 

It’s a challenge that faces search and rescue organizations across Nova Scotia, which are made up of volunteers, many of whom must balance some combination of fundraising, family, a job and training.

“I know we’re appreciated,” Veinot said. “But [we’re] not funded properly, not supported properly.”

Veinot, who is the president of the Nova Scotia Ground Search and Rescue Association, said most organizations are busy fundraising to help pay for their operations and supplement funding provided by different levels of government. Bingo nights, raffles and auctions are among the other fundraising methods groups use. 

Search and rescue teams get most of their funding from municipal governments, as well as some from the province and Ottawa, said Veinot. The province provides $3,000 to each team annually. Veinot said this isn’t enough to cover the insurance for vehicles her team uses.

Kim Masland, the minister of emergency management, said the province recognizes the commitment of ground search and rescue teams and their importance to communities.

She was on hand for one of the searches for missing siblings Jack and Lilly Sullivan last year in Pictou County and said searchers “were coming out of the woods filled with wood ticks, bitten with flies. They put everything into those searches.”

Last fall, her department expanded the emergency services provider fund, which provides assistance to groups including fire departments and ground search and rescue crews. It increased the total funding for the program from $1 million to $4 million, with 144 organizations now eligible for up to $30,000 in funding.

Mike Johnson, a volunteer with Pugwash Ground Search and Rescue, had a 33-year career as a police officer and has also done emergency management dispatch work. 

He thinks the province should work toward fully funding search and rescue.

‘Funding is tough,’ minister says

“Even if they had some mandatory funding that looked at the equipment search and rescue teams need so that we didn’t have to do a lot of fundraising and find ways to borrow and scrimp,” Johnson said, adding that would take a lot of pressure off team members. 

“Funding is tough,” Masland said. “When we can do more, we absolutely will.”

Ron Jeppesen, the president of Eastern Shore Search and Rescue, said while the group managed to cover operating expenses for the 2025-26 fiscal year without fundraising or by “simply doing without,” it’s busy fundraising for another reason. It needs a new command vehicle he expects will cost around $350,000.

“This critter behind me, that’s 20-some years old,” he said, pointing to a converted school bus that predates his arrival 14 years ago. “It needs to be replaced.”

The bus serves as his team’s base during search operations. It holds equipment, acts as a station to co-ordinate with other first responders and is used for tracking teams in the field. 

Jeppesen said it’s hard to find parts when the aging bus breaks down. For around a month last year while they waited for parts to be shipped, the team couldn’t get it out of the garage.

He said they’d like to purchase a five- or six-year-old motorhome or tour bus and would convert it themselves to save money.

Jeppesen said the group received $140,000 through the expanded emergency services provider fund, which includes regional grants up to $200,000 for partnerships between municipalities and first responder organizations.

For Halifax Search and Rescue, storage at its facility is limited, so it’s developed blueprints for a new $15-million building it imagines as a facility for emergency management volunteers, not just ground search and rescue. 

The lack of space meant a truck had to be stored outside, but rust forced the team to take it out of commission.

The team’s Paul Service said he understands rust happens to all vehicles but their two large vehicles have minimal rust after almost 25 years of being stored inside. 

For Veinot, the work of search and rescue volunteers is deeply personal. She’s been doing it for 38 years and got involved after seeing their work first-hand.

When her father went missing, she watched a team look for him at the family farm, with many of its members taking time off work. Although the search had a tragic conclusion, she was struck by the searchers’ efforts and dedication.

“It was just amazing what these people — what they gave,” she said.

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