The News department at the Wellington Advertiser is inundated every day with press releases to the News email account – and much of it is spam, some of it is useful, and a lot of it is self serving.
There is one message, though that arrives on a regular basis that we always look forward to getting published, and it often comes from the Grand River Conservation Authority. Officials there will warn of high flows in creeks and rivers, slippery banks, and other dangers for people travelling along the waterway. We have always published those public service pieces, and, once in an editorial in our sister publication, The Community News, we noted that we could probably recite the warnings by heart because we have read them so often.
We also wrote that we are happy to publish them because, while they might seem a little boring or even nagging for those who read them regularly, we would rather publish those than details of a death by drowning, particularly the death of a child.
There was no warning to publish this week. Just the sudden jolt we got when we opened a police report email that told of a child falling into the Conestogo River at Drayton, and, thankfully, being rescued by his older sister and younger brother.
We cannot say that a lack of a warning was laxity on the part of anyone, either, because, frankly, there had been no freeze-overs in our part of Wellington County.We saw no ice anywhere on creeks and rivers in our travels.
Over the years there have been too many drownings, often caused by foolishness – and not just by children who did not know any better or who forgot the safety rules in the excitement of play. Some years ago on opening day of the fishing season, an adult drowned in the Grand River after being specifically warned that the river was too high for good fishing, and too high for safe fishing. He ignored the warnings – and paid with his life. It was only weeks later we learned that he was married to someone from our old home town.
Another time and while working at another Newspaper, we remember a man launched a canoe in a river in the spring, just below a dam, and we heard the results on a police scanner. We saw the canoe, upsidedown, caught at a low level bridge crossing where water was running at least two feet higher than the bridge. The man escaped – but his young daughter did not. Devastated fire and rescue personnel recovered her body from under that canoe after some hours of dangerous work.
Rivers, lakes, and water can be a death trap – particularly this close to winter and in early spring. It is paralyzingly cold, and, during the rain we have been having, the banks are treacherous. Ice is also thin, as the rescued boy can attest.
Gavin Dolson Stuckless, 6, of Drayton, is now the youngest person this Newspaper has chosen to be requoted in our Said Again feature on this page. After his narrow escape, he sums up what he learned, and it is an excellent warning to everyone else, too.
Please be careful out there. Life it too precious to lose by accident, and it is even more tragic when it is lost foolishly.
