BONNYVILLE – With over 40 years experience and military training backing him up, Ted Dahr is sharing his knowledge by offering survival training classes in the Lakeland.
Dahr, of Beaver River Bushcraft, has been offering classes at Vezeau Beach, on Moose Lake. Speaking about the unique classes he offers, Dahr says it can be difficult to receive relevant survival training, but he is passionate about passing on his knowledge of both bushcraft and emergency preparedness.
Dahr explains that survival training is not just for outdoor enthusiasts, but something he sees as an important life skill for everyone.
His passion for bushcraft was triggered when he was 14 years old and became lost in the woods of Backwater, Nova Scotia.
“When I got out of there, I determined that it would never happen again. I had all kinds of merit badges from scouting and none of it did any good, so I began to teach myself,” says Dahr.
In 1977, Backwater did not have a lot of resources or survival teachers, so Dahr turned to books.
“I'm sure the owner of the bookstore scoured his catalogue every month and if there was a book that was coming out on anything to do with wilderness survival or bushcraft or any kind of self-reliant stuff, he knew there was a sale,” says Dahr.
He accumulated a lot of knowledge around survival skills, and wanted to do something with it, so he began teaching Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and took groups orienteering.
Dahr decided he had taught himself as much as he could and wanted more training.
“I was a poor kid, so in 1994, I joined the military thinking the infantry would give me everything I need for land navigation and wilderness survival. Six months after I was in my regiment, I was the survival instructor, and it was six years before I learned anything new, so I figured I’d taught myself pretty good,” says Dahr.
In 2014, Dahr was able to join the search and rescue team on base, and said it was great teaching people who were involved and liked to learn.
“It was nice to learn what we could do to help people. It became a really big passion and branched out into civilian search and rescue units.”
In 2019, a fellow outdoor educator in the Bowman area challenged Dahr to turn his passion into a business, and Beaver River Bushcraft was born. Dahr is now retired, and has continued to pursue his passion for bushcraft, offering survival training as a way to make it accessible for people to gain valuable skills.
During his youth, relying on books to learn bushcraft, Dahr understood the importance of having access to information that is relevant to the area you are in.
“As a poor kid from Nova Scotia, when was I going to have to worry about being bitten by a Gila monster, or getting water from a cactus? It wasn’t relevant. Then one day the bookstore owner called and said he got in this book called Bushcraft by Mors Kochanski, and it was all about the boreal forest – it was totally applicable, and I just thought, ‘wow, this guy is great, I need to learn all this stuff’.”
Dahr was posted to Cold Lake, and got the opportunity to not only meet Kochanski, but have him read and critique a book that Dahr plans to publish.
“The priorities of survival never change. The only things that change are the way you have to provide for them. It doesn't matter if you're lost in the woods, if your car broke down, if there's an earthquake, or power outage. You still have to have first aid, warmth, and water. You have to have some kind of shelter, and a form of communication to either be found or find out what’s going on. Then if it lasts long enough, you’ll need food.”
Dahr also speaks about alternate ways to heat one's home, he shares knowledge about canning and smoking the contents of a freezer during a power outage, melting and filtering snow into drinking water, and turning your bathtub into a reservoir.
Achieving emergency preparedness can be costly, and Dahr encourages people to take small continuous investments in it.
He also speaks about teaching young children to be prepared for emergencies and says his programs welcome kids that are 12 years old and older.
With a population that is becoming less self-reliant, Dahr feels that learning survival skills is increasingly important, and agrees it will not only provide individuals with a higher level of safety but lessens the burden on emergency services, such as search and rescue, if citizens are more prepared.
