CLOUD LAKE - Searchers spent Friday night and Saturday on the water and shores of a lake in the Annapolis Valley looking for a missing man.
RCMP were called just before 7 p.m. Friday after someone saw an abandoned boat floating on the surface of Cloud Lake, which straddles the boundary of Kings and Annapolis Counties on the South Mountain near Torbrook.
Cpl. Mike Carter, who was coordinating the search effort, said someone fishing on the lake sometime after 4 p.m. spotted a boat anchored near an island with no one around. He said the second person thought it was odd and searched the island before driving out of woods to get a cell phone signal and call police.
The boat was behind an island that is just off from the boat launch, where police found 67-year-old Burpee Leslie Banks’ vehicle. It was the only other one in the lot beside that of the man who called for help.
RCMP, the Valley and Annapolis ground search and rescue teams, and firefighters from Nictaux, Kingston, Middleton, Annapolis Royal and New Minas searched with boats and along the shore for Banks throughout the night. The Lunenburg and Digby ground search and rescue teams joined the effort Saturday morning.
Elson said it’s assumed that Banks went fishing at the lake, which has many islands and inlets and is part of the protected Cloud Lake Wilderness Area.
“No one was advised when he was leaving, so we don’t have a time of when he was last seen or when he may have left,” she said.
That’s also why he wasn’t reported as overdue, she said. She wasn’t sure if there were any life jackets in the boat.
Banks is white, stand six feet tall and weighs 170 pounds. He has green eyes and black and grey hair.
Elson said RCMP would like to speak to anyone who was travelling on Fire Lane in the Cloud Lake area, or were boating on the lake Friday, or who saw or was talking to Banks.
