Stranded

In August of 2001, while you all were enjoying a barbeque out back or relaxing in the sun, the award winning, highly acclaimed show @Discovery Canada (now Daily Planet) sent Les out to the remote bush of the Canadian boreal forest to survive alone for seven days. Les was hundreds of kilometers from the nearest person or settlement without food, tent, matches, or equipment. With just two cameras, the items any person might have in their pockets and his wits he had to deal with the intense bugs and the hottest week on record! He had to find food, shelter, water and make a fire without matches! There was no camera crew, no million dollar prize and no one to vote off the island! Les set the record straight for an audience obsessed with Hollywood notions on how to survive in the wilderness. The result, other than Les still being alive, was a hugely popular five-part mini series which was reformatted into a one hour special. A web site based on the series quickly became one of Discovery Channel’s most popular and even surpassed the Crocodile Hunter web site for popularity.

Then he did it again, at the dead of winter! At the end of January when southern Ontario had a balmy plus 15 degree C. heat wave, Les endured temperatures of minus 41 degrees C. for an entire week alone. His only comfort was a shelter under a tree and a small fire started by striking rock against steel. He had an axe and one energy bar per day for food.