Shortly 9 a.m. a call came in to the fire department for an ice rescue by the James Street swing bridge.
A man at the scene told CBC News his daughter had spotted a hole in the ice as she rode to school in a school bus that crossed over the bridge.
Thunder Bay Police said the girl texted her mother, who then alerted them.
Crews arrived to find a deer had fallen through the ice, just a couple metres from shore.
The captain at the Brown Street Fire Station said it was more difficult to get to the river's edge than to pull out the deer.
"Ah, the bank's very slippery [and] the water's cold,” Chris Beaucage said.
“One of the guy's suits leaked, so he's a little bit wet, so it was a bit of work for the guys."
Firefighters carried the deer up the bank, and warmed it with blankets.
The ice along the riverbank is only about an inch thick.
Beaucage noted rescuers usually “pull a deer out of the water once or twice a year.”
“They seem to try to get across the river here to the other side, and end up going in,” he said.
(cbcnews - Dec 13, 2012)
