4 decades later, Quebec man seeks stranger who saved his life

Peter Webb can still remember his heavy winter coat weighing him down when he fellinto the coldwaters of Lake Massawippi in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

He was only four, and he thought he would die.

"All of a sudden, I felt this hand on the scruff of my neck, pulling me out of the water," Webb said, recalling the unusually cold autumn day in 1972.

Now, he wants to thank the stranger who pulled him from the water. It's only a matter of finding him.

Panicked plunge

Webb had always been warned not to play on the five-metre sailboat his father had built.

But one cold October day, at the cottage of his father's co-workersomewhere between North Hatley and Ayer's Cliff, he wandered down to the dock and onto the boat with another little boy.

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Even though the boatwas tied to the dock, the rope was long enough to allow itto drifta fair distance away.

The boyspanicked.

"Us, just being small, we couldn't get back," Webb remembered.

Frightened, he made a jump for the dock and, instead, he plunged intothe frigid water.

Unknown rescuer

Webb's memory of the man who saved him is patchy.

He believes he was in his 30s or 40sand had a beard.

Webb says he must have been English speaking, because he remembers understanding him, and he didn't speakFrench at that age.

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After his rescuerpulled him out, Webb recalls the man yelling at him propelled by what he now believes was nervous relief.

"Of course, I'm terrified at this stranger yelling at me after I had just been stuck in the water," he said.

The man then brought Webb back to his parents at the cottage and went on his way.

The rescuer did not appear to know the person they were visiting, a Scottish man named Norman, who was working at a company called Ingersoll Rand at the time.

People in the area tended to know each other, Webb said, so he believes the man who saved his life might have been visiting.

Search for stranger

Webb said the close call didn't leave him with any lasting trauma, except perhaps a fear of water.

But the events of that day came flooding back to him earlier this winter, en routeto a farm in Ayer's Cliff to cut Christmas trees.

As he drove near the shore, he thought of his own five-year-old son in the car withhim.

"I just had this sudden thought, of, 'Wow, if that man hadn't pulled me out of the lake, maybe I wouldn't have survived, and these kids, this boy, wouldn't be here with me now,'" he said.

"My son's a tough little kid, but you also see the vulnerability of a young boy, and you think, 'Wow, that must have been something for me to have been in the water at that young age.'"

Webb put out a call out on Facebooklast month,in search of the man who saved his life.

He would like a chance to thank him.

"Just to say, 'Hey, here is what my life was like. It was partly aided or maybe entirely aided by the fact that you were there.'"

Even if the man has died, Webb would still like to know his name.

"Maybe a relative of his was told this story. I don't think it's something that the man himself would have forgotten."