CANOE ACCIDENTS by Ralph Bice
From Wednesday, July 26, 1978
I have not known very many canoe accidents. Especially those on the tragic side and deaths resulted. Every year there are rules written for canoeing and many talks on the air. Swimming is a must and life jackets. Years ago we were taught the proper method of handling a canoe, how to load it, how much a canoe could carry, and most important of all, to be able to judge how dangerous the water may be.
The first canoe accident that I can remember, when people died, was back in 1909. Three young men, two of them married, were promised a job in a lumber camp somewhere near the southern border of Algonquin Park. None had the price of a train ticket but it was only a day’s journey by canoe. None were really good in a canoe. They were told that three in a small bark canoe was too large a load but since all the lakes but one were small they did not heed the expert advice and started their trip.
Communication was slow then (even before the postal service took to going on strike.) and it was close to two weeks when it was found they had not arrived at their destination. So a search party set out and the three bodies were found in the large lake. It had been a bit on the windy side and the heavily loaded canoe could not take it.
The next one happened the first summer a bit before I started to guide in the Park and only a while before the Tom Thompson drowning. Again, inexperience. There is a short, fast rapids on the Opeongo River called the Featherstone rapids. The guides were portaging, not far, as with the high water they did not think it safe to try and take the canoes through. There was a young man in the party who wanted the thrill of running the rapids but the guides refused to let him try as the canoe might be badly damaged. But as soon as the guides had gone with their first trip this young fellow took a canoe and went down the rapids. When the guides came for their second trip one canoe was gone and when they returned to the foot of the rapids there was the canoe upside down turning in an eddy. A diver had to be brought in to find the body which had been dashed under the small falls.
A few years later there was a gang of men surveying Canoe, Tea and Smoke Lakes, laying out cottage sites. A young fellow who had come with the surveyors managed to buy a nice bark canoe, only it was small. He did most of the mail carrying and one morning did not return from the railroad. A search found the canoe and dragging found the body. Again, a beginner who did not understand bark canoes or rough water.
Only a year or two later there was a terrible tragedy in south central Ontario where a number of boys were in an old war canoe which members of a canoe club had said was not fit to be used by a boy’s camp. It capsized and a number of lives were lost including one of the camp directors. Again unsafe canoe, high winds and inexperience.
A father, his son and his son’s friend were drowned in Green Lake, now Happy Isle, in the early thirties. Expert swimmers, the wife and mother claimed that they could not have drowned. Their bodies have never been found, only the canoe.
Then there were the three men who tried to go up Lake Lavielle in a heavily loaded 16 foot canoe with a motor; the man who went out after being told that the wind was too much or the boys who decided to run a bad set of rapids on the Petawawa. Then the man who was having his picture taken by his son to use up the last of the movie film. He stood to walk to a different seat. The three who went on a very windy lake in a small canoe and two were lost.
The worst of course would have to be the very bad accident on Lake Temiskaming. So many reasons for that tragedy but the coroner was right when he said it was doomed from the start. Again rough water and incompetent men in charge. One thing that did not seem right was the remarks of one of the leaders when he said he thought it was just a “routine” capsizing. Almost as if that was to be expected. I have been a professional guide for 60 of the 78 summers I have been around. I have paddled many thousand miles, some on Lake Temiskaming, and I never heard such an expression used by any canoeists. Also, l never heard of any canoeing accident where it was the fault of the canoe.
What to do to prevent these unnecessary tragedies? As long as canoes are used by persons who have little knowledge of paddling there will be trouble. Perhaps magazines could stop showing campers who by the pictures are unable to paddle. Many still treat canoes and water as if there never would be any trouble.
Note: by B.M.
In the early ‘70s I camped on an island on Happy Isle. There was a cairn erected in memory of a father, son and friend of the son who were never found after a tornado swept through the area.
Saint John’s School of Ontario, founded in 1977, is best known for the canoeing tragedy on Lake Temiskaming during a canoe trip on June 11, 1978 when 12 students and one volunteer died of hypothermia after their canoes capsized. Inexperience and poor planning were to blame. Anyone who has ever taken a swim in the lake will appreciate how cold it can be.