Nic stops two foster boys from attempting a dangerous river crossing

Nic stops two foster boys from attempting a dangerous river crossing by persuading them to leave their canoe on the bank and offering money for bus tickets to Roseau River Reserve. The episode turns on a small but consequential choice: rather than treating their plan as mere recklessness, Nic listens to what is driving it and offers a safer route home, without any assurance that the boys will take it.

Setting and Immediate Danger

The encounter begins as Yolandi Von Riesen and Nic walk together, talking about Elfrieda Von Riesen’s despair at the repetition of the days. Yolandi is struggling to hold back tears; she trips on uneven pavement, and Nic catches her elbow. Their conversation is interrupted by two boys carrying a canoe on their heads. The scene moves abruptly from private distress to a danger that requires immediate attention.

The river is moving at 380 cubic metres per second and still has ice on it. Nic warns the boys that it is too dangerous to put the canoe in, and later tells them to wait perhaps a week. The boys first deny that they are going to launch it, but the canoe shifts as they speak quietly beneath it. They eventually lift it off their heads and set it down on the grassy boulevard. When one asks about trying farther downstream, Nic rejects that possibility too: the distance does not make the crossing safe.

Yolandi estimates that the boys are about fourteen or fifteen. Neither has a life jacket. Their age, their equipment, the fast current, and the remaining ice make the proposed crossing a serious risk, even before they explain why they are determined to go.

The Boys’ Urgent Plan

Asked where they are from, the boys say they are from Roseau River and want to return to their real mother. They tell Nic and Yolandi that they are foster children in the city, that they hate their placement, and that their foster parents beat and starve them. They also say that the Manitoba Warriors are trying to recruit them for operations. These claims reach the adults as the boys’ account of their situation; the scene does not independently establish what has happened in the foster home or what the group has asked of them. It does make clear that the boys understand the river crossing as a way out of an intolerable present and back toward a home they remember as better.

Their disclosure changes the nature of the encounter. Nic and Yolandi do not know what to say or do, and the boys continue to prepare to leave, lifting the canoe onto their shoulders again. Yolandi points out that they have no life jackets, but they ignore her. The canoe becomes a barrier between the adults and the boys as Nic addresses them in a low, firm manner and asks whether anyone is waiting for them in Roseau River. The boys say that people are there and that they live there. The problem is not solved by persuasion alone: they still intend to go, while the adults have to find an alternative that answers the reason for their urgency.

Nic’s Alternative

Nic proposes a concrete exchange. He will give the boys enough money for two bus tickets to Roseau River, take the canoe, secure it to his car, and keep it at his home until they can collect it. He also offers to write down his address. When the boys do not respond to his question about the fare, he says he will get his car and return; one of them then estimates that the tickets cost about twenty dollars each.

The boys put the canoe down and sit on it while Nic retrieves the car. He gives them enough cash for the tickets and offers to drive them to the bus depot. One boy agrees, while the other declines; together, they leave on foot toward Portage and Main, away from the river. Yolandi runs after them with the scrap of paper bearing Nic’s address. One boy looks at it, puts it in his pocket, and urges the other onward. Their departure ends the immediate prospect of a crossing, but it does not confirm that they buy tickets or reach Roseau River.

Nic drives back with the canoe secured on the car roof. When Yolandi asks whether the boys will buy tickets or return for the canoe, he admits that he does not know. He hopes they will come back, while suspecting that the canoe may have been borrowed. The arrangement therefore protects against the immediate danger without turning an uncertain offer into a guaranteed rescue: the boys have cash, a possible means of returning home, and Nic’s address, but their next choices remain outside the scene.

Outcome and Narrative Significance

Yolandi tells Nic that he has saved the boys’ lives. He waves the praise away rather than accepting a claim that cannot be proved. That response preserves the event’s uncertainty: the river danger was real, and Nic’s intervention prevented the boys from putting the canoe into it, but the narration cannot establish what would otherwise have happened. His help is measured in specific acts—warning them, listening to their account, supplying fare, taking responsibility for the canoe, and offering transport—rather than in a claim of mastery over their circumstances.

The episode also links the novel’s recurring concern with suffering to a moment of practical care. It follows Yolandi’s account of Elfrieda’s torment at days that repeatedly begin with hope and end in darkness, but it does not present Nic’s intervention as an answer to that larger anguish. Instead, the scene gives attention to a different immediate crisis: two young people trying to escape a placement they say is abusive, while risking their lives on a river in spring. Its outcome is deliberately incomplete. The boys walk away from the water, but their safety and destination remain unknown; Nic keeps the canoe, hoping they will return. The narration then turns sharply back to family life when Yolandi receives a text from Nora about being banned from Winners and about Will breaking a screen. That abrupt return to ordinary family troubles leaves the rescue neither resolved nor made grander than the concrete help the adults could offer.