Privacy Policy

Last updated: 4 August 2026

Fernie Search and Rescue is a volunteer non-profit society in Fernie, British Columbia. This page explains what happens to your information when you use this website. It is written to be read, not to be survived — if anything here is unclear, email us and we will explain it.

We handle personal information under British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

This website collects nothing

ferniesar.ca is a set of static pages. There is no form on it, no login, no shopping basket and no database. We run no analytics, no advertising and no visitor tracking, and we set no cookies of our own. We do not know who visits, and we could not tell you if you asked.

Volunteering: the application form

Applying to join Fernie SAR is the one place we ask for personal information, and it is the part of this page worth reading properly.

The application is a Google Form — it is not part of this website. When you open it you leave ferniesar.ca and you are on Google’s infrastructure, subject to Google’s privacy policy as well as ours.

What it asks for. Your name, email, phone number, home address, date of birth, whether you hold a driver’s licence and its class, and whether you consent to a criminal record check. It asks your reasons for applying and any physical conditions that would limit you in the field. It asks about your employer — their name and address, your occupation, how long you have worked there, and whether they support your involvement and would release you for a callout. It asks about your skills and certifications, the backcountry equipment you own, your wilderness experience, and the time you can commit. Finally it asks for two references — each one’s name, phone number, address and email.

That last point is worth stating on its own: you are giving us other people’s contact details. Please ask them first.

Who sees it. The Fernie SAR members who administer recruitment. Applications are discussed within the team as part of deciding whether to invite you to an interview.

Where it is stored. In Google’s cloud, on servers outside Canada, most likely in the United States. That means the information can be subject to the laws of the country it is stored in, including lawful access requests by foreign authorities. If that is not acceptable to you, contact us and we will arrange another way to apply.

How long we keep it. Indefinitely. We do not currently delete old applications. You can ask us to delete yours at any time — see below.

Contacting us by email

If you email info@ferniesar.ca, your message and address sit in that mailbox. We do not add you to a mailing list, because we do not have one.

Content embedded from other services

Two pages include material hosted elsewhere. Loading that material means your browser contacts those companies directly, and they can set cookies and see your IP address. We do not control what they collect.

Nowhere else on this site contacts a third party.

Hosting

The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, their servers process the ordinary technical details of a request — your IP address, the page asked for, your browser type — to deliver the page and to protect against attacks. We do not receive this as a report, and we do not use it to identify anyone.

Asking us to delete your information

Email info@ferniesar.ca and ask. Under BC PIPA you may also ask what personal information we hold about you and request a correction. We will respond within 30 days.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

Changes to this policy

If this changes we will update the date at the top. The history of this page is public — it lives in the same version-controlled repository as the rest of the site.