This editorial is an expanded and revised version of a column that first appeared in the Jan. 9, 2004 edition of The Citizen:
With this week's chilly weather freezing our rivers, there's a tragedy waiting there. I feel it every time I walk along the Fraser and the Nechako, see the ice, frozen and still, and imagine the currents flowing darkly beneath.
Davey never had a chance.
When he fell through, the cold sucked the breath out of his lungs. His snowsuit and winter boots would have filled with water, pulling him down. He may have looked up to see the hole close above him. He may have been too startled and confused to know he was dying.
Sebastian Junger graphically details how a body drowns in his book The Perfect Storm. Davey's heart likely beat for another five minutes after he blacked out, being so young. His metabolism would have immediately slowed as a reaction to the cold and the blood would have pooled around his heart and his brain in a valiant effort to conserve oxygen. Even after his heart stopped, his brain likely was alive for another 30 minutes or more.
Only then he died.
On shore, his older brother, Richard, regretting grabbing Davey's tuque and throwing it on the ice, wisely didn't run out in a fruitless effort to save him. He paced back and forth along the riverside, screaming his brother's name, his boots crunching in the snow.
Already in shock, he would return to his home across the street and play quietly alone for the remainder of the afternoon, until darkness and dinner. At first, he could not tell his increasingly frantic parents where his brother was.
Finally, choking back his tears, he blurted it out and froze their hearts.
I remember my parents sending their condolences. Richard was in my sister's grade and my parents knew his parents socially. Years later, we would visit them at their new home in Alberta. We played with Richard in the basement while our parents had a few drinks and some laughs upstairs. He probably already knew his parents' marriage was crumbling under the weight of their grief.
To this day, I fear open ice.
Many winters ago, it would get cold enough for long enough in Penticton that Skaha Lake would freeze over and ice would cover the shore of Okanagan Lake. One day I noticed an unkindness of ravens (that seems to be the most common name for a flock of them) congregated about 100 metres out on the ice across from my apartment building.
I thought nothing of it.
It was someone brave or stupid enough to walk out to see what was attracting the birds who discovered the body in the ice.
Years later, in Salmon Arm, I went out on White Lake so I could get some pictures of people icefishing. I took some nice photos of a young boy - it was his birthday - waiting patiently for a bite.
The hole where his line disappeared looked ominous to me, like a passage to a place where light and warmth is a dream.
The bright, sunny skies couldn't shake my unease and I got off the lake as soon as I could.
When I see people walking out onto the ice on the Nechako or the Fraser, my breath catches, as if I've just fallen into the water myself.
I stand and stare. And remember.
Be careful walking out onto the frozen lakes in the area. Make sure there is enough ice to support both you and your snowmobile. Don't go out onto the rivers, no matter how cold it gets and how thick the ice looks.
The river carried Davey for miles, through its mouth and into the lake. Perhaps the following spring, or it may have even been years later, parts of his snowsuit washed ashore.
His body was never found.
