TORONTO STAR ON THE WATERFRONT: Loreena McKennitt kicks off a national
campaign today aimed at highlighting water safety.
Singer stresses water safety
Loreena McKennitt's life changed when fiancé died in summer boating
tragedy
By Betsy Powell TORONTO STAR 5/18/99
The call came in the middle of the night.
Loreena McKennitt was mixing her first live album at Real World Studios
in England last July when she received the devastating news that her
fiancé was missing after a boating accident on Georgian Bay.
After months of touring behind her most acclaimed and commercially
successful CD, The Book Of Secrets, McKennitt, who heads her own record
company, flew back to Toronto and drove straight to the Bruce Peninsula.
That afternoon, the body of Ron Rees was discovered. The 28-year-old
was wearing a life jacket and died of drowning or hypothermia.
"Ron and I were planning to get married last fall," McKennitt said
quietly yesterday, revealing her loss publicly for the first time.
For a week, the Stratford, Ont.-based singer/composer and
multi-instrumentalist kept a vigil at the Coast Guard office as divers
searched the lake bottom and shoreline for two other missing men, Ron's
younger brother Rick, 26, and 17-year-old Gregory Cook, also from
Stratford, Ont.
When the search was called off, McKennitt hired a Virginia company [ed.
http://www.marinesonic.com ] with high-tech equipment that wasn't then
used by Ontario rescue officials. "They came up and conducted a further
three-day search ... but that didn't prove to be successful."
Their bodies were never found.
At the time, local newspaper accounts referred to McKennitt as an
"anonymous friend" who acted as a spokesperson for the families but
didn't want to be identified for fear her celebrity status would bring
more attention to the tragedy.
McKennitt, who's in her early 40s, now feels differently.
She is holding a news conference today down at the water's edge in
Toronto to kick off a two-week national campaign aimed at highlighting
water safety. She hopes to prevent such an accident from happening
again.
"I feel a responsibility," she said yesterday, calm and composed, in a
lakeside hotel room surrounded by life preservers and other boating
safety equipment. Peter Garapick, a supervisor with the Canadian Coast
Guard's Office of Boating Safety, sat nearby.
"If this (publicity) campaign can help save just one life, then it will
be more than worth the effort and the loss of my friends' lives will
seem less senseless."
Last fall, the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund, established by the trio's
friends and family, presented the Ontario Provincial Police Underwater
Search and Recovery Unit with a Sea Scan sonar system [ed.
http://www.marinesonic.com/seascan.html ] designed to pinpoint the
location of objects in deep water. Today, the fund will give the unit a
shark machine - a multipurpose, remotely operated vehicle used to help
verify underwater objects.
Also today, the multimillion-selling artist releases Live In Paris And
Toronto, recorded last April at the Salle Pleyel in Paris and at Massey
Hall on May 3 and 4 of last year. Proceeds from the double CD, available
only through mail order from McKennitt's label, Quinlan Road, will be
donated to the fund.
Some of the money will be earmarked for water safety education,
something McKennitt is impassioned about.
"We want to rattle any complacency there might be within the public,"
McKennitt said.
"That's a good word," Garapick added. "Everybody thinks it's not going
to happen to me and it can happen so quickly on the water."
McKennitt says the Rees brothers, who owned a successful business
installing traffic signals, had finished work in Owen Sound with Cook,
their younger employee.
"They were great guys ... they donated a lot of time to the community,
putting up Christmas decorations," she said.
They set off for a sunset sail on Georgian Bay near Meaford last July.
"It wasn't a windy night, it wasn't a stormy evening ... it was a
beautiful sunny evening."
But something went wrong - possibly a wind squall - capsizing the
16-foot boat. It was found overturned at 2 p.m. the next day.
"For me, one of the biggest gaps last summer in that accident was that
six or seven people knew that these three fellows were out there and
never called the Coast Guard," said McKennitt.
"This is what family and friends can be trained in. If you're planning
to go out in any craft ... you make sure you log with someone that
you've gone out and where you're planning to go and when you plan to be
back. I think that's an absolute must."
The singer said she's relieved new federal safety requirements are now
in effect. (About 200 people die on average in boating mishaps across
Canada every year.) The new regulations include tightened restrictions
for children and new training requirements for power vessel operators,
to be phased in over 10 years.
Garapick said boaters should be especially vigilant this Victoria Day
weekend because water levels are extremely low. "Rocks are higher,
shoals are higher."
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