N.B. man honoured for dramatic river rescue: ‘He was there and then he was gone’
HALIFAX — Rorey Chamberlain said he never expected saving another man’s life would change the course of his own.
Chamberlain, 26, had just finished sweeping a chimney in Rothesay, N.B., on Jan. 19, 2014 when he heard a man’s desperate cries for help in the distance.
He dialled 911 and rushed down an embankment, across a busy street, down another embankment and over train tracks to the edge of the frozen Kennebecasis River.
It was there he found a man in his 70s clinging to a sheet of ice. Chamberlain said he reassured him that help was on its way, and the man managed to pull himself back up onto the ice.