Lake Manitou claims lives of fishing pals

Two Ohio men drown in tragic boating mishap

by Alicia McCutcheon

LAKE MANITOU-Members of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) underwater search and recovery unit discovered the bodies of two American tourists early Saturday morning after their fiberglass boat had been reported found without the occupants on Thursday evening at approximately 6:22 pm.

The two Ohio men, Harpal Chohan, 48, of Columbus and Russ Morrison, 44, of Gahann were staying at the Wee Point Resort on Bidwell Road and had only just arrived Thursday. The pair left for a boat ride on Lake Manitou at around 5 pm and were not seen again.

Jim Hembruff, proprietor of Wee Point Resort said he and his family are greatly saddened by the event, explaining that one of the men had been coming to Wee Point for over 10 years. He said the lake was "wild" that day and noted that the vessel the men were traveling in was not very large.

"There's an old saying that goes 'there's no two fishing trips alike,'" Mr. Hembruff said as a warning of the unpredictability of Mother Nature. "Conditions can change fast on the lake."

The proprietor said the boat was seen from the resort property Thursday evening running in "figure eights" and obviously unmanned when the police were called.

Constable Al Boyd, community services officer with the OPP, said that upon police arrival-approximately 6:30 pm-the boat was found on shore with the motor still running.

That evening a search was initiated with officers on foot as well as the marine unit. The United Chiefs and Councils of Manitoulin Tribal Police also assisted in the search, launching their vessel on Lake Manitou as well. Constable Boyd explained that the emergency response team and the OPP helicopter from Sudbury were activated that evening. The search continued until sunset that night and resumed at daybreak Friday morning.

Both the North Shore Search and Rescue team and the Rescue Coordination Centre Trenton were notified and on standby.

When the search again resumed on Saturday morning, the dive unit located the bodies of the two men not far from the resort. Police investigation has shown that neither men were wearing a life jacket.

Mr. Hembruff could not say enough about the police efforts over the course of the three days.

"They did everything they could do," he said.

Constable Boyd warned of the lake temperatures, both inland and in the North Channel and Lake Huron.

"We haven't had warm temperatures considering the time of year and the water is still extremely cold," Constable Boyd said. "Hypothermia should be a considering factor for those venturing out fishing or boating. People need to be aware. It doesn't take long until the core body temperature starts to go down."

"I can't stress the importance of life preservers enough, even in the middle of summer when the water is warm," the officer continued. "They should be worn at all times."

Tracy Braun of the Canadian Red Cross said the biggest mistake people make is believing they can put their life jackets on after there is a mishap.

"You don't usually end up in the water by choice," she said. "It's the same message as seatbelts. You wouldn't wait until an accident to put it on, would you? It's only going to prevent something if you have it on-not use it as a seat cushion."

Ms. Braun noted that the highest rate for drowning victims is males between the ages of 14 and 45 as they are the "hardest group to try and change their behaviour."

"Even good swimmers drown," she said. "The best life jacket is the one you wear."

Constable Boyd noted that this makes three drownings already this year-including 38-year-old Sergio Girimonte of Brampton drowned in Mudge Bay on April 26. Mr. Girimonte lost his footing while fishing for rainbow trout and slipped under the water. His body was recovered the following morning by the OPP underwater recovery unit.

"Know the conditions of the water and always wear a life preserver," Constable Boyd stressed. "Take extra precautions and always notify someone as to where you're going."

Take it easy!

            OPP radio communication and

            new portable speed sign make

            it more difficult to avoid fines

by Lindsay Kelly

LITTLE CURRENT-Speeders beware: the Manitoulin OPP has a new tool in its arsenal to nab highway lawbreakers, and drivers who disobey speed limits will be targeted.

The Manitoulin OPP has acquired a radar speed indicator sign that, when set up at the side of the road, reads the speed of motorists and displays it on a digital monitor. The OPP hopes the sign will encourage drivers to decrease their speed, making the roads safer for travellers. But if drivers don't slow down on their own, the OPP will do it for them.

"We'll have it set up for three or four days, and for the first few days it will just be the radar sign," Constable Al Boyd explained during the program's launch. "But for two days we'll have an officer there with a radar and they will be issuing tickets."

The acquisition of the speed sign is a joint initiative of the Manitoulin OPP and the Manitoulin Injury Prevention Coalition (MIPC), whose mandate is to "work together to make Manitoulin Island a safe community," noted coalition chair Serena Verboom, who is also a public health nurse with the Sudbury and District Health Unit.

For the last few years, the OPP's mandate has been to reduce injury and fatalities on the province's highways, which means reducing speeders, aggressive driving and impaired driving, Constable Boyd noted. The coalition, which counts OPP officers as members of its organization, decided it needed to increase the education and awareness component of its safety campaign.

After borrowing a similar speed sign from the UCCM Anishnaabe Police, the OPP noted its effect immediately. "As soon as we put it out, we noticed a very big decrease in speed and more awareness," Constable Boyd noted.

The project-at a cost of between $12,000 and $15,000 for one sign-initially seemed prohibitive, but partnerships with local municipalities and organizations, and businesses like Manitoulin Transport, resulted in enough fundraising dollars to make it work.

Officers plan to visit municipalities over the next few months, following which they will begin to enforce the speed limits in areas that have been identified as high-risk and areas about which the public complaints have been made, including school zones, construction zones and community safety zones.

Constable Boyd is confident that the sign will make a difference and that safety on Island roads will

be increased.

"It's been used in other areas and it's been shown to be extremely effective at reducing speeding," Constable Boyd said. "It's tools like these that make our jobs much easier."

Officers will also have the capability to download data from the sign so they can watch for trends amongst drivers (including the number of cars that go through an area and their average speed), something he estimates will be useful for municipalities and the media, Constable Boyd suggested.

Statistics illustrate that speeding does contribute to more injuries and deaths on the roads, noted Jeff Griffith, from the Ministry of Transportation's marketing office.

In 2005, almost half the drivers who died in highway vehicle accidents died as a result of speeding or because they lost control of their vehicle, and the higher a driver's speed the more likely he or she is to injure or kill someone, he noted.

If you're doing 30 above the posted speed limit, you are six times more likely to be in an accident than if you were going the posted speed limit, and if you are going 50 over, you are 10 times more likely to get into an accident, he said.

Mr. Griffith called these "selfish, thoughtless acts that tragically take lives."

People caught speeding 16 to 29 kilometres an hour over the speed limit will lose three demerit points and those caught going 30 to 49 kilometres an hour over the speed limit will be docked four demerit points.

Under the newest legislation, drivers caught going 50 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, or charged with street racing or stunt driving, will get an immediate seven-day licence suspension and seven-day vehicle impoundment. If convicted of the offence they could pay a fine between $2,000 and $10,000, lose six demerit points, spend up to six months in jail and face a licence suspension of up to two years.

OPP Inspector Garry MacPherson noted that, thanks to highway safety programs, fatalities on provincial highways have decreased by 22 percent, and police hope to maintain and even improve that number.

Programs like the speed radar program give police "one more tool in our toolbox to improve safety on our highways," he said. "If we can prevent one injury, save one life, I would call that a success."

Grinding, tarring and chipping of Manitowaning's Cardwell St. approved, under way this week

by Alicia McCutcheon

ASSIGINACK-Many people will be breathing a sigh of relief, at least temporarily, as the process of hard topping Cardwell Street begins this week.

This week the crew will be taking up the existing asphalt, breaking it up and reapplying it to the road. Next week a lift of crushed gravel will be applied to the road and following that, an emulsion added that creates the hard surface.

The tar and chip process is a new one for Cardwell Street but one that was fast becoming a necessary project for the municipality of Assiginack with Reeve Leslie Fields proclaiming the road a "health and safety" problem at a recent council meeting.

The municipality was turned down for funding by Northern Development and Mines as well as the Canada-Ontario Rural Infrastructure Fund for a more permanent solution to the road.

"This is not a long-term solution," explained Assiginack clerk-treasurer Alton Hobbs.

He said the municipality tries to run a seven year cycle for the tar and chip process on its roads but isn't confident it Cardwell Street will last that long.

"We're cautiously optimistic for five years, but that's even doubtful," Mr. Hobbs said.

The municipality has asked for a meeting with Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs Chuck Strahl through Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing MP Brent St. Denis but, the clerk said, there has been no word yet.

"We feel we need some federal input into the solution which has been absent so far," he said. "We're hearing that we'll need federal money before the province comes to the table, and until we can get them to the table we're just throwing darts at a dart board."

Wildflower of the_Week

            A new photo series begins this week

EDITOR'S NOTE: Beginning with today's issue, we will be showing off one of Manitoulin's beautiful wildflowers in a weekly feature called Wildflower of the Week. The photos and synopses will be submitted by Bay Estates photographer John Savage.

by John Savage

must admit that I have often taken these flowers for granted through the years and indeed treated many of them as common weeds in the past. It is only when I began to take close-up photos of many of them that I realized what a treasure of beauty I have been overlooking. We at The Expositor hope, whether you are a true Haweater, a wannabee Haweater or a first-time visitor to the Island, that you will enjoy this weekly feature and will look for each lovely wildflower as its season arrives.

MARSH MARIGOLD

The marsh marigold is one of the earliest wildflowers to appear each year on Manitoulin Island, giving a bright and cheery welcome to the spring. It loves wetland, so is found in swamps, marshes and beside the many water-filled ditches along our roadsides and farms. We see it in large clumps with its shiny, dark green leaves making a contrasting backdrop for its bright yellow flowers. The flowers can measure up to 4 cm and have between five and nine petal-like sepals.

This is a plant that should be admired from a distance, but not picked, as it contains strong irritants that could cause blistering.

EDITORIAL

Public officials should build bridges, not barriers

Parts of a letter to the editor, "Sex change procedures should not supersede medical surgeries" that ran on page 5 of the May 21 issue of this newspaper call for comment, primarily because of the letter's author.

Larry Killens is not in favour of the provincial health-care system opting to pay for the cost of sex change procedures. Mr. Killens, who wrote the letter, is certainly not alone in this concern and whether or not these procedures are more than cosmetic, and in fact bear on the emotional and mental health of the recipients. It will be long debated by Mr. Killens and by others.

But Mr. Killens is a community leader by dint of his representing Manitoulin taxpayers on the Rainbow District School Board and it is more than a little disturbing to read the following paragraph in this letter:

"George Smitherman [Ontario's Minister of Health] (brackets by the editor) confirmed on Thursday that the Ontario Tax Payer is going to pay for sex change operations. This announcement came one year after his marriage to his lifelong partner Christopher Peloso."

That is the sole reference in Mr. Killens' letter to the fact that Mr. Smitherman is a partner in a same sex marriage. Nor is his spouse, Mr. Peloso, referenced again.

But there they are, juxtaposed as parallel statements in the same paragraph, somehow seeming to imply that there is a linkage between the health minister's homosexual liaison and his ministry's support of a bill that will pay the cost of sex change procedures.

We don't want to spank Mr. Killens, who we view as a competent school trustee.

But his linked statements tread narrowly close to fomenting distrust of homosexuals. Perhaps worse.

The implied logic like this: that the government will pay for sex change operations is a bad thing. George Smitherman is the Minister of Health. Mr. Smitherman and his same sex partner were married a year ago. This is the sort of thing you might expect an openly gay cabinet minister to support.

We have little concern about Mr. Killens' principal argument about the burden of cost these procedures will place on the health care budget. That is an issue that lends itself to public debate and so Mr. Killens' observations on the matter are fair comment.

What is not so fair, however, especially from someone of Mr. Killens' status in the community, is his efforts to link the bill the government supports, where George Smitherman is the point man on the issue as Premier McGuinty's health minister, with Mr. Smitherman's private life where he has married a same-sex partner.

In fact, the letter pointedly refers to the announcement of the funding of sex change procedures coming "one year after his marriage to his lifelong partner Christopher Peloso".

One year later? So what. Why link the two events at all, unless it is to make Minister Smitherman look as demonic as possible to any and all those people who might agree with Mr. Killens' views on public payment for sex-change procedures together with that group who may not like homosexual people on principle.

Put the two together, and that could make quite a large overlapping.

This may not be what Mr. Killens set out to do. We certainly hope not.

But it has the same effect and as a public citizen, as is Mr. Smitherman, Mr. Killens should be doing his best to bring people together, not encouraging a troubling old bias, as homosexual baiting certainly does.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Islanders should go green and ditch plastic bags

Environmentally friendly alternatives are available

To the Expositor:

Did you know Canadians use about 6 billion plastic bags a year?

The plastic bag manufacturing business employs 7,000 people in Canada.

Before a bag as such was invented, people carried their goods in found objects including gourds, animal horns and bull scrotums.

The raw material for plastic bags is oil or natural gas, and plastic bags generally take 400 to 1,000 years to decompose.

Sea turtles often mistake plastic bag litter in the oceans for jellyfish. Nicknames for the plastic bag: witches' britches (USA), witches' knickers (Ireland), the national flag (Ireland), a curse that's blowing in the wind (Kenya), the national flower (Kenya and South Africa), modern tumbleweed, snowbirds (Alaska) and white pollution.

Plastic bags can be recycled into plastic wood, used for decking, siding, park benches, among other things.

The average plastic bag weighs six or seven grams but can carry 6.5 kilograms. (Information obtained from www.cbc.ca/doczone/battleofthebag/index.html.)

I watched a documentary on TV last night called The Battle of the Bag and it got me all riled up again! I've wanted to share with fellow Islanders my wish to not use plastic bags on the Island anymore, and watching this documentary was my motivation.

Currently there are only a handful of communities in Canada that have banned the use of plastic bags, but more and more are contemplating the idea. Can you just imagine if the whole Island went plastic bag-free! That would be amazing and inspiring. There are alternatives to plastic, such as compostable cornstarch bags, which they have started using in Modbury, United Kingdom, and canvas bags, and the reusable grocery bags they have for sale in grocery stores now.

As a suggestion, it would be very cool if local grocery stores, convenience stores, and our gift shops all across the Island took this into consideration. This kind of change can't happen overnight, but if we all take it into consideration together, I believe we can see a positive change in whether we use plastic bags here on Manitoulin Island in the near future. Miigwetch.

Lyndsay Taibossigai

M'Chigeeng

Ontario not fooling anyone when it comes to Aboriginal interests

Self-serving government doesn't respect intelligence of citizens

To the Expositor:

Regarding the letter to the editor titled "Jailing of First Nation members disappointing and saddening" (May 14), this self-serving statement by the Ontario Government Minister of Northern Development and Mines demonstrates how little they respect the intelligence of ordinary citizens. Talking honey to your face, while cracking the whip of jail behind closed doors fools absolutely no-one.

They are only saddened that the First Nation leaders did not back down and sign away their children's legacy under duress. Minister Michael Gravelle talks about "recent efforts," "visiting communities," "sharing information," "providing prospector training," and that they are "committed to continue." The minister does not say that they or the mining company ever seriously discussed the rights granted to K1 under Treaty #9 and what that means today and for the next seven generations. Had such a discussion occurred with the authority of the Ontario Government supporting such fair consideration of Native peoples, K1 would have not been forced to the wall.

The only true part of their statement is where they say, "In addition, we will continue to enrich the support and advice we provide to the minerals industry on when and how to engage Aboriginal communities." That advice to the minerals industry is already understood: we will jail those Indians who stand in your way and we will continue to try to fool Joe public.

How did this government go off the rails so quickly as it concerns Aboriginal peoples? I applauded McGuinty's new government when they immediately launched the inquiry into the death of Dudley George. And at Caledonia, after the police were beaten back by the Mohawks, they did the sensible thing-they began negotiations. But, if they are negotiating Caledonia like they are consulting with K1, it may be the answer to their utter failure at solving these questions of political will.

On April 23, when the Ontario legislature held a brief debate on the K16 during a rally in their support outside, our local MPP Mike Brown did not bother to attend although he walked by the rally outside earlier.

I wake up every day and think of the chiefs and councillors in jail and I lay down my tobacco. They were only doing their job.

The second Aboriginal Day of Action is set for May 29. Election Day for Ontario is approaching.

Thomas Hare

M'Chigeeng