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But Stoddard wasn’t budging. And he wasn’t panicked. He was at the helm, reversing the vessel, trying to work her off the rocks — and telling his crew that he wasn’t abandoning ship because he was going fishing. It was Feb. 6, right around 8p.m. The sea off Canso was quiet. There was no moon, barely any wind, and a light snow was falling.The water temperature was a few degrees above freezing, the air temperature a few degrees below.

For the next three days the Fisherman’s Provider II was stranded on that rock, its captain a ghost. For the next three days, the people of Canso watched helplessly from shore, waiting for a man to be rescued. None of the authorities tasked with preserving life —not the Coast Guard, not the Canadian Armed Forces search and rescue, and not the RCMP — went aboard the boat and saved its captain. In the end, it was a group of six fishermen who risked their lives to find Stoddard — dead in his bunk, still in his fishermen’s coveralls — and bring his body home.

Months later, questions continue to swirl among Canso locals, as to how those best equipped to save the captain — didn’t.

“As far as I am concerned, they left Roger out there to die,” says Stevie Goreham, a longtime family friend and one of six men who went in search of the body.

“They left a good man to die.”

When Roger Stoddard wasn’t fishing, he was talking about fishing, or working on his boat, getting her ready for the next trip out. The 64-year-old captain had a reputation for fishing hard. Going 7 to 10 days at a stretch, with never more than a day or two ashore before heading out again. Stoddard had survived hurricanes, and battled the worst the Atlantic Ocean could toss at him over a 40-plus-year-career hauling in haddock, halibut, cod, shrimp and swordfish from the waters off Nova Scotia.