Labrador man who died after boat capsized remembered as avid outdoorsman
Police are still looking for the body of a Labrador man whose boat capsized last week, as his family pay tribute to him.
Raymond Green, 67, is being remembered as a family man, who was most at ease when he was outdoors on the land or at sea.
"He was a quiet man and he didn't speak very often but when he did speak it meant something to someone," his wife Phoebe Davis said Sunday.
Green was an expert wood harvester, an experienced crab fisherman, and a renowned guide at the Cloud 9 Salmon Lodge in Cartwright.
"He loved to read, he was an intellectual person as well as an outdoor person. He loved to hunt and fish and drive around and play with his grand kids and drink a few beers with his buddies," his wife told CBC News.
Davis said Green was out on Eagle River with two tourists from the United States on Thursday, when his boat capsized and all three men were thrown overboard.
She said they had been trying to put an anchor down to do some fishing when the anchor failed to take hold, and they ran into fast and choppy waters.
The two tourists were rescued by a nearby tour boat, but Green's body remains unaccounted for.
One of the men on the boat visited Davis on the weekend to pay his respects.
"He was one of the guests … he told me that [Raymond] stayed cool and he said, 'Stay with the boat' and that was his last words to them," she said.
"They said that he did everything to make sure they were safe before he thought of himself, which doesn't surprise me."
Occupational Health and Safety said Saturday its officers are investigating the incident.
A family man
Green and Davis had lived together in Cartwright for the past 31 years.
She had six children before they got together, and he had three, but when they found each other they joined their families.
Davis said they also fostered multiple children over the years, giving them a place to call home.
"He was a big family man. He loved his children and he loved my children as much as his own," she said.
Davis said after a health scare a few years ago, Green vowed never to go back to the hospital, and jumped right back into his outdoor pursuits.
"Six months later, he was back at work, he was cutting his wood, he was doing his fishing with one lung, but he was too stubborn not to," she said.
"He used to say, I'm never going back to die in a hospital, I'm going to die on the land."
With Green's body still out there, and a recovery mission still ongoing, Davis is hopeful he'll be found and she'll be able to lay her husband to rest.
But if he's never found, she takes solace in the fact that he went out the way he wanted to.
"Because I know where he loved to be," she said.
