By John Francis
Northern Bruce Peninsula offers access to some of the wildest fresh water in Canada. Unfortunately, most people seem to regard this as romantic rather than threatening. They don’t understand that the ice they are standing on may break loose and float towards Parry Sound. They don’t understand that when they get a quarter mile offshore, the wind will dive down off the cliff and try to blow their canoe or small boat to Parry Sound. They don’t understand that water temperatures in Georgian Bay are terrifyingly cold well into June.
It is not a coincidence that Tobermory is the “Shipwreck Capital of Canada”. The combination of capricious winds and unforgiving rocks got the upper hand on far too many otherwise seaworthy vessels. After the ships were wrecked the violent, cold water took a heavy toll on the passengers and crew.
Fast forward a century or so. Commercial shipping has become amazingly safe, with electronic navigation, electronic communication, backup power systems and years of technical and safety training for the crew. But recreational use of the lakes is still the wild west — no training necessary and no safety systems in place.
In the last couple of weeks there have been two fatalities and at least five near-fatalities on MNBP’s coastlines. There may have been more — near-fatalities are rarely newsworthy and many of them go completely undocumented.
After a lifetime of swimming pools and lifeguard-supervised beaches, weak swimmers often don’t recognize that they are weak swimmers — and don’t understand that tossing waves and slippery rocks are dangerous.
Novices in canoes, kayaks and small inflatable boats are frequently unaware that they are novices. A lifetime of paddling on warm, sheltered waters does not make you an expert and does prepare you for Georgian Bay in May, where the water is so cold many people can’t breathe when they’re suddenly dumped in it. Where the waves may not align with the wind and may be coming from more than one direction, forming unpredictable crests and troughs. Where the west wind dives down off the cliff and pushes your boat away from shore faster than you can paddle.
This is not a new problem. The list of swimming and small-boat fatalities goes back decades.
And if you go to any gathering of local folk, you’ll hear many stories that never made the news: “Had to call all the divers up from the wreck, then chase off after the raft before they got out of sight — two kids in an inflatable raft with a single plastic paddle, got too far offshore and got caught in the wind; they were blowing towards Parry Sound at two-plus knots. They didn’t even know they were in trouble” Or “they jumped into the wave and then got smashed against the rocks — two of them drowned but there were off-duty paramedics there on a picnic and they saved them with CPR…” Or “somebody saw her floating half a mile offshore, too exhausted to swim, and called the fire department…”
I suspect that the need for rescues is a growing problem — the increasing popularity of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron among Ontario’s urban multitudes is bringing ever-larger numbers of novices to our shorelines and waters. Whose responsibility is it to educate them about the dangers? Whose responsibility is it to save them when they endanger themselves?
The educational piece is particularly difficult, because the “victims” are rarely locals — they’re generally people who came up from the city. They wouldn’t likely see any safety initiative taken by MNBP or even Bruce County. Most of them would probably ignore safety-related material anyway, but shouldn’t somebody at least make an effort?
And then — whose responsibility is it to rescue them?
Georgian Bay and Lake Huron are not part of MNBP, not part of Bruce County. They are either federal or provincial, mostly both. So who is responsible for rescuing the unwary who put themselves in danger?
Canada Coast Guard has a vessel in Tobermory. She can make reasonable time to locations in Tobermory’s immediate vicinity, but would take hours to get to Lion’s Head or Stokes Bay.
The Armed Forces have a Hercules aircraft outfitted for various kinds of rescue, based at Trenton. It can get to the Bruce Peninsula in about an hour. If necessary, it can deploy rescue technicians and an inflatable boat by parachute.
The OPP do not have a vessel in the water on the peninsula. They have helicopters in various locations that can get here in about an hour.
MNBP’s Fire and Rescue Department is outfitted by MNBP taxpayers and staffed by volunteers. It has no jurisdiction outside of MNBP — and the waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron are definitely outside of MNBP. Despite the fact that it’s technically not their responsibility, MNBP Fire and Rescue get called out to most of these occurrences anyway and are often involved in the rescue.
But every time they get called out, it costs MNBP taxpayers a couple of thousand dollars. There is no top-up from the federal or provincial governments when the call-out involves federal or provincial waters.
Parks Canada charges people an admission charge to get access to the shoreline. The provincial and federal governments get HST — 8% and 5% respectively — on every cent visitors spend in MNBP. The municipality gets nothing.
Maybe an arrangement is needed to funnel some of that revenue to MNBP — to outfit and staff the emergency responders who usually arrive first. Because you can be sure that with two National Parks and hundreds of shoreline STAs, there will be more rescues every year.
So the next time you’re talking to Bill Walker or Alex Ruff…
