Deachman: By sheer coincidence, I was at Britannia Beach when a swimmer didn't resurface

After two incidents inside a week in Britannia Bay, let’s talk solutions.

Published Jul 13, 2023 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 4 minute read

Police at Britannia Beach on Wednesday evening. Photo by Bruce Deachman /Postmedia

As I write this on Thursday afternoon, it was still uncertain if the weather would cooperate and permit police to resume their search for a 21-year-old man who went missing Wednesday evening while swimming at Britannia Beach, after a nearly eight-hour search proved ultimately futile.

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By sheer coincidence, I was at the beach that evening, arriving at around 7:45 p.m, roughly half an hour after emergency responders did.

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As an Ottawa Fire Services search boat swept the bay, other responders walked in the water, hoping to locate the man. A half dozen police and paramedic vehicles were nearby on the eastern portion of the beach, lights flashing. An ambulance had backed up close to the water, its back door open and a wheeled ambulance stretcher placed on the beach.

Elsewhere on the beach, you’d hardly know that a life-and-death drama was unfolding. The beach volleyball courts were full, errant balls occasionally rolling up to the police vehicles. Picnic tables were filled with families and dinners. Leashed dogs were walked. Joggers and cyclists did their thing.

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At 8:25 p.m., Ottawa Fire Services called off the boat search, and Ottawa Police Services divers took over. It felt to me like a critical moment, and not a positive one, as though the rescue mission had become a recovery one. Paramedics put the stretcher back in the ambulance and closed the door.

I saw a young red-shirted City of Ottawa lifeguard walk across the beach to the Ron Kolbus Centre, accompanied by an emergency responder who I imagined was comforting her. The incident occurred just after 7 p.m., which is when the lifeguards officially go off duty and the beach is no longer supervised. As usual, an announcement was made over the beach’s PA system at the time to let the public know their shifts were over.

The lifeguards were, I’m told, nonetheless first on the scene to look for the man, and alerted 911, as did a neighbour. As I watched the lifeguard cross the beach, past one of the handful of posted signs warning swimmers of a sudden drop-off, I thought of how terrible she must have felt. Judging by where searchers were looking, the man disappeared outside the buoyed area, but how could she feel anything else?

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I thought, too, of a family in a situation like this receiving the worst possible news about a child, or brother or sister. Fatal drownings occur about 150 times each year in Ontario, according to the Lifesaving Society. It guts me just to consider it. I can’t imagine the pain.

You wonder in these situations what can be done. Can incidents like this, and the one that occurred at the same beach on Sunday evening, in which a teenage woman was rescued after being unconscious in the water for about nine minutes, be prevented?

A couple of nearby residents I spoke with mentioned the drop-off as a possible culprit. The beach was officially closed for the summer of 2020 so that it could be dredged and made deeper. It had been 20 years since it was previously dredged, and considerable sand and silt had built up, much of it from the flooding that occurred the year previous. Over the years, the depth of the water in the swimming area had shrunk to less than half a metre at the peak of summer.

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But now, these residents told me, you could walk out in the water and then, without warning, simply drop like a stone.

But that isn’t really the problem, according to Chris Wagg, former chair of the Ottawa Drowning Prevention Coalition.

“The beach is completely safe,” she told me on Thursday. “Otherwise, Ottawa would never encourage you to swim there.”

She urges people, however, to stay within the buoy lines, where lifeguards are monitoring and where the river bottom is well known. Don’t stray into the “unknown” waters.

“It just comes down to the same basics: if you know how to swim, and you’re swimming in a known area, with a buddy, all those things.”

Bay Coun. Theresa Kavanagh, whose ward includes Britannia, is herself an active swimmer. She described the area outside the buoys as “unpredictable.”

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“You have to know it and you have to know how to swim,” she told me. “You can’t rely on just walking. You have to know how to swim. You’ve got to know how to remain calm, and just keep your head up. These are the things that every child should learn. Every single child.”

Coincidentally, it was at a council meeting Wednesday that River Coun. Riley Brockington, whose ward includes Mooney’s Bay Beach, asked city staff to provide more information about recent drowning incidents.

“One is too many,” he told the Citizen on Thursday. “Can we do some sort of safety scan and is there anything to be done to improve overall safety? Maybe the answer is ‘We’ve done all we can and these are just unfortunate incidents.’ But I have to ask.”

If the situation is to improve at Britannia and Mooney’s Bay and other beaches, the solution may lie in the city’s schools and pools. A former school trustee, Kavanagh recalls an attempt to start a program teaching every Grade-4 student how to swim. The initiative, brought forward, incidentally, by then-trustee Brockington, ultimately wasn’t possible, she says, because the city simply doesn’t have enough pools.

Surely we can dredge the city budget to address that.