March 17, 2021
Jennifer Hamel laces up her sealskin boots, as she gets ready to go to a playground with her husband Peter Hamel and their four-year-old son Jamie on a frosty but sunny January day in Fort McMurray, Alta.
She can walk normally now, with minimal pain. That wasn’t the case almost 16 years ago, when the Clarenville woman was involved in a terrifying snowmobile accident in Labrador.
Back then, Jennifer and Peter Hamel, along with their two friends, decided to take one last run before putting their machines away for the season. But little did they know, when they pulled out onto the ice of Lake Melville, in an area called Terrington Basin, just how thin it was.
Their machines broke through. As they tried to walk back to shore, Jennifer Hamel went into the water.
She was stranded on an ice pan, waiting to be rescued, with nothing but wool socks on her soaked feet. The nerve damage she endured that day meant that, for almost a full year afterwards, she would have to walk on the sides of her feet.
If that became unbearable, Jennifer would have to crawl to get herself around.
“It took a while for me to be able to walk properly,” she recalled.
Peter Hamel noted: “It was a good 10 years before Jennifer could walk any sensible amount of distance without [foot] pain.”
Now, Jennifer Hamel, 39, is retelling the tale, and sharing new details of what her life is like since that accident, as part of the CBC Newfoundland and Labrador series, This Is My Story.
'Nobody could get to me'
It was a spring day, towards the end of April 2005, when the Hamels were travelling on one machine, with Greg Finlay and Shawn Broomfield on another, far ahead.
“Once we crested the point, we saw them on the ice, running and waving,” Peter said. “So I slowed down, and as the skidoo started to slow down, I guess, to the point where she was no longer staying above the ice.”
But Peter still didn’t realize the trouble they were in.
“The way it is in Labrador, in that particular area ... You have really warm days, and a layer of ice on top breaks or melts … and then it freezes at night,” he said. “So if that breaks, you generally just fall a foot or two into the next layer of ice, which had happened before.”
But on this day, the weight of the snowmobile broke through.
At that point, and without realizing the severity of the situation, Jennifer got mad, and started stomping and jumping around — on what turned out to be very thin ice.
The pair started walking towards the shore.
“Instead of taking my own path, I followed directly behind [Peter], and he was breaking through,” Jennifer said. “The further I was going, the further down I was going. And it got to a point where I could no longer pop back out. I went literally to my armpits.”
The ice submerged underneath Jennifer then gave way, leaving her nothing to hold onto, except for a piece of ice that was in front of her.
“Nobody could get to me, because there was very little for me to hold onto. And if anybody tried to get to me, they would have broken up the little bit of security that I had,” she recalled.
The current pulled off her boots, leaving her feet with just cotton socks against the ice-cold water.
Jennifer and Peter Hamel describe their journey in this video:
Broomfield, standing on a larger patch of ice nearby, was also stuck, but was not in as much danger. He refused to leave Jennifer’s side. He yelled at her to take off her helmet.
Then, she heard Finlay call out to her.
“He said, ‘Kick like you're swimming.’ That phrase right there is what saved my life,” Jennifer said.
“I started to kick, and my two feet came up behind me… My left foot caught ice in the back of me. So I managed then to scoot both legs over onto this little bit of ice, and I used my arms to pull myself over. And then I was on a pan that was generally just nesting there in between all the ice and broken water.”
Walking to get help
Finlay and Peter Hamel had gotten into shore, but only Peter still had his boots. (Finlay lost his when his snowmobile went into the water.) So, it was decided that Peter would walk on the trail, in his soggy snowsuit, to get help.
A six-kilometre trek, that took an hour and a half — that felt like a lifetime.
“During the walk, [I] was just praying the whole time that... Jennifer would hang on and things wouldn't turn worse than what it was,” Peter said.
Once he was finally within eyesight of the town, Peter started shouting for help. A friend heard him, and jumped on his skidoo.
Peter explained the situation, and the friend made some phone calls, and headed back to his house to get some rope, to hopefully pull Jennifer out himself.
“As soon as he left, the weight of it all came off my shoulders. And I actually collapsed to the ground, started crying by myself,” Peter said.
The friend came back on his snowmobile with supplies, picked Peter up, and they headed to the rescue site.
But the rope was of no use. With all of the ice broken up around Jennifer, they couldn’t get close enough to reach her.
In the nick of time
The pain of the cold on Jennifer’s feet was starting to get to her. She laid on her stomach, with her legs kicked up behind her.
“On top of the fact that my feet started to get really, really cold… I couldn't lay flat down, because my toes would have been resting… in the ice, in the slob,” Jennifer said.
Broomfield kept telling her to move her feet.
“It got consistently harder and harder [to do], and I remember at one point saying to Shawn, 'I'm going to lose my feet... I can barely move my toes,'" she recalled. “I could hear the water lapping up against the buoy that was next to me, and then I could hear the ice cracking.”
Broomfield kept reassuring her that everything was fine, and told her not to move, while they waited for help.
It took about another half an hour for the helicopter to arrive on scene.
“When the helicopter started to come, everyone started yelling at me like, ‘It's coming, it’s coming! You're going to be OK,’” she said.
The rescue crew first picked up Broomfield and took him into shore, before attempting to get Jennifer.
“They ended up coming in behind me instead of in front of me. So [the rescuer] said, ‘Well, we're going to try and get as close to you as we can.’ So I kind of turned my body a little bit so that my arms were kind of facing them,” she said.
“They reached down and they grabbed my arms. And one guy looked at me, he said, ‘Now, I need you to move slow.’ And in my head, I was thinking, ‘Nuh uh. I'm getting out of this! I'm getting out of this ice. I'm not going through. You're not going to leave me here.’
"So I probably moved a little faster than I should have. But I grabbed a hold of them.”
“[The rescuer] had said, ‘You were very lucky,’ because as soon as my weight came off that pan, the pan actually tilted.”
The rescue crew pulled her in, across the floor of the helicopter.
“The poor man, I wrapped my arms around his leg… and literally I hugged his leg. I'm sure he has my fingerprints permanently embedded into his leg,” she said.
She held on all the way to the hospital.
Once she had been checked over and was settled into the hospital, the helicopter pilot who helped rescue her actually paid her a visit.
“He had said, ‘You were very lucky,’ because as soon as my weight came off that pan, the pan actually tilted,” she said.
“So if I had tried to get myself onto shore, this could have been a whole different story.”
Hiding her PTSD
Later that day, Jennifer was released from hospital to go home.
“That night, I didn't sleep,” she said. “But that one night of not sleeping rolled over into months of not sleeping.”
She was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which she hid from everyone for a very long time.
When she and Peter would go to bed at night, Jennifer would wait until her husband would doze off, and then she would get up, go out to the couch and turn on the TV.
“I found this station that had Bible verses just rolling up through, with beautiful scenery in the background. And it had soft music playing. And I would watch this all night long, and I would watch the sun come up,” she said.
As soon as Jennifer would hear Peter stirring, she would go back to bed until he got up.
“This literally went on for months,” she said.
Turning to his wife, Peter said: “I can remember you saying, any time you closed your eyes … you’d see yourself trapped under ice.”
Jennifer said the fear completely took over her life.
One night, she felt like she was having a heart attack. She woke Peter up, and they went to the hospital. That’s where she disclosed the severe anxiety she had been dealing with.
“Eventually, I did get in to see a counsellor, and she… gave me some techniques to use to try and overcome the anxiety,” Jennifer said. “It lasted for quite some time, but eventually, I just kind of learned to put it behind me.”
Damage to her feet
Before the accident, Jennifer worked as a waitress. Because of the nerve damage in her feet, she was told she would have to change careers.
A change, she said, that was for the better.
“I started as a disability employment counsellor with the Canadian Paraplegic Association. They actually kind of helped me as well,” she said. “And then I ended up going to work for them, which was fantastic.”
Jennifer said if it had not been for the accident, she would never have explored working as a counsellor.
“That was an amazing experience,” she said. “That [accident] kind of pushed me into doing that, which was pretty cool when I look back on it.”
They moved to Fort McMurray for Peter’s work in March 2019. A year later, Jennifer started a job as a labourer, working with wet vacs and hydrovacs.
“I'm absolutely loving the outdoors and loving what I'm doing now,” she said.
The couple says their spare time is spent with their son.
“He will reach the age where it won't be cool to spend time with Mommy and Daddy, so we're taking advantage of as much time as we can,” Peter said.
Looking back
While Jennifer is glad to have the dark days behind her, she has only been out on the ice twice since that fateful day.
Each time, she says, was nerve-wracking.
“It's unfortunate, because I love that type of outdoor activity,” she said.
The Hamels have since gotten survival suits, as well as picks that go around the shoulders, to pull themselves out of the ice if they should ever happen to get into a similar situation again.
Jennifer has advice for anyone going out snowmobiling.
“The first thing I'll say to them is: Be careful. Don't go on any ice. Don't don't do what we did,” she said.
“Make sure you know where you're going. We thought we did… Two days before, Pete and Shawn were in that exact area… We thought it was safe, and within two days, [the ice conditions had] deteriorated so fast.”
When it comes to dealing with an issue like PTSD, Peter and Jennifer Hamel both say not to stay quiet.
“Know there's no shame in… seeking help,” Peter said. “You wouldn’t be ashamed if you had a problem [with] your knee or your arm.”
Jennifer added: “Reach out to as many people as possible. Reach out to your family, your doctors… Don't keep it inside as long as I did. I tried to hide it. And that, I think, made it worse for me.”
Reflecting on an accident that happened more than 15 years ago, Jennifer says she used to be filled with anxiety.
“But now… I just kind of shake my head at myself, like, ‘What were you guys thinking?!’” she said.
“It [also] makes me proud to know how well we all handled ourselves… Four people went through the ice [that day], and four people walked out of it.”
This Is My Story
This Is My Story is a special series from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador, where we check back with people who have overcome some tremendous struggles in their lives.
Explore previous stories from this series: