From the Globe and Mail
Police have found the body of a Toronto man who wanted to test his survival skills in the woods north of Huntsville, Ont.
Richard Code was an avid follower of the television show Survivorman and had taken few supplies on what was to be a weekend trip.
His brother, Stephen Code, said provincial police told him that his brother died of hypothermia.
It dropped to minus 12 at night in the area and snowstorms hit much of southern Ontario during the weekend.
It’s not clear if Mr. Code had formal wilderness training but relatives said much of his knowledge came from watching the television show which features Les Stroud living in the wilderness without food, shelter or equipment.
Mr. Code’s landlady Barbara Ellis said he frequently read books about wilderness survival and would regale her with tales of his adventures.
Wow, I don’t really know what to say. Having watched all of the Survivorman episodes with Mark, the one thing that you come away with is that this is really, really hard and also there is an emergency team standing by in case things do go bad. You also get how important it is to have the right supplies with you if you do get sick, hurt, or just plan unlucky.
She said Code would use what he learned in the books to make shelters in the summer using branches and bark.
"He would strip tree bark off the tree in the backyard, and he’d weave them and braid them like rope," she said.
Ellis said Code went on four previous trips without a tent or food, but she was especially nervous about what would turn out to be his final trip to the Huntsville area.
"He’s come back from all these other survival trips but I knew this time he was going up into a snowstorm and I wasn’t very happy about that," she said.
Surviving a weekend in the summer is a lot different than going into the Canadian winter at –25 and a snowstorm. It’s too bad it ended this way.
