CRANE LAKE- A day of harvesting wild rice on the Vermilion River turned to tragedy for a 43-year-old Orr man who died after his canoe apparently capsized on Saturday, Sept. 10.
The search for Keith Joseph Roy began Saturday around 1:30 p.m. after other parties on the river discovered his canoe unoccupied and overturned, according to a St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office release.
Supervising Deputy Nate Skelton said that they determined that Roy used the Gold Mine Resort access point to enter the river, about three miles upstream from Vermilion Falls and five-and-a-half miles southwest of Crane Lake.
St. Louis Sheriff’s deputies and the St. Louis County Rescue squad were joined by Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement and were aided by a Minnesota State Patrol aircraft equipped with a forward-looking infrared camera as they conducted the search between the Gold Mine Resort access point and the falls. The search was suspended around midnight, Skelton said.
Searchers were back early Sunday morning, accompanied by dogs and using remote operated submersibles and several boats, with assistance from Forest Service law enforcement. At about 4 p.m., the St. Louis County Rescue Squad located Roy’s body floating in the water.
Roy was apparently a well-experienced wild rice harvester, posting pictures to a social media account in September 2020 of a boat loaded nearly to the gunwale with rice harvested, he said in the comments, “by Lost River on Nett Lake.” Roy was featured in a 2021 segment aired on KBFT Bois Forte Tribal Community Radio sharing his knowledge about ricing and giving listeners instructions on how to make a push pole.
As of Monday, the incident and cause of death were still under investigation by the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, according to the release.