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Nobody in a canoe that capsized Monday in St. Thomas resulting in one man’s death was wearing life-jackets, city police said.
Three adults were canoeing on Lake Margaret – a small lake created by gravel mining in the city’s south end – when the canoe tipped about 8 a.m. Two of the boat’s occupants were located and taken to hospital, but a search for the third canoeist went into the evening.
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The body of Ryan Davies, 26, of Port Stanley was located around 6:40 p.m. in the lake that ranges in depth between one and three metres with a six-metre hole in the centre. The lake’s maximum width is 225 metres and it is about 830 metres long.
Labour Day’s tragedy on Lake Margaret marks the 13th water-related death in Southwestern Ontario, and it underscores the need to wear life-jackets on waterways.
In July, the body of a 57-year-old London man, who went missing while kayaking, was found near St. Joseph beach in Huron County north of Grand Bend, after a six-day search.
In June, a man wearing a life-jacket was rescued from Lake Huron about five kilometres off-shore of Goderich harbour. The man was suffering from hypothermia, but police said the flotation device “saved his life.”
Const. Brett Phair stressed the OPP’s messaging regarding life-jackets.
“Life-jackets save lives. The vast majority – estimated 85 per cent – of those who die in boating deaths were not wearing a life-jacket,” Phair said in an email.
The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada
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