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Sleeping paddlers rescued on Kootenay Lake

Nelson Police Department's marine unit assisted a couple paddlers asleep in their drifting canoe on Sunday morning.
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Nelson Police Department's marine unit assisted a couple paddlers asleep in their drifting canoe on Sunday morning.

Police received a call to report the seemingly-empty canoe floating just past the Orange Bridge.  However, one of the dispatch officers in the department had recalled seeing two people sleeping in a canoe by the boat launch on his way to work moments earlier.

Officers with the Marine 1 unit went out on the lake to check the canoe and found the people still sleeping inside, unaware they were being carried down the lake by the current.

Police used their boat to tow the canoe back to the Rotary dock at Lakeside Park.