A Toronto teen who drowned during a school trip to Algonquin Park in northern Ontario was not wearing a life jacket when he joined a group of students who were washing in the lake, according to a classmate.
Jeremiah Perry, 15, drowned Tuesday and his body was found Wednesday in Big Trout Lake. His older brother was one of approximately 30 C.W. Jefferys Collegiate students on the trip. The boys’ family moved to Toronto from Guyana in September.
A student told CTV Toronto that Jeremiah was not wearing a life jacket when a group of kids went into the water to wash off after a couple of days in the bush. There were supervisors nearby, he said.
“Something pulled me down,” said Boran Balci, who says he was wearing a life jacket. The teen, a Turkish immigrant who doesn’t speak English as a first language, said he was pulled away a few metres and then pulled down into what he described as a “dip.”
He said he felt something around his feet and maybe a hand, but does not know if it was Jeremiah struggling in the water.
About a dozen students and their parents tearfully reunited at the school when a bus arrived at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Thursday. They were the group that was with Jeremiah. A remaining group of students and chaperones were making their way back Thursday afternoon.
The school board has indicated that students going on such outdoor adventure trips are required to take a swimming test and that a few students were barred from going because they didn’t pass. But parents, including Jeremiah’s father Joshua Anderson, have said their children did not know how to swim.
When asked about the swimming test early Thursday afternoon, Toronto District School Board spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz says the leader of the trip, who has the most details, was still at Algonquin and hasn’t been reachable.
“So our complete focus for the last 24 hours has been really on supporting the family through this tragedy because let us not forget, this has been a horrific tragedy, and supporting our kids to bring them home.”
The details of the incident and the swim test preparations will be known once everyone is home and they can debrief, she said. She added that safety protocols dictate any such excursion requires a swim test.
“When you have canoes involved, there’s often if not always, specific kinds of swim tests because lake conditions can differ, but again, I don’t want to speculate.”
Schwartz-Maltz says outdoor-ed courses have been running for years and are “much beloved by kids.”
She said any time there is an incident “we take a good, hard look at what happened, lessons we can learn, did we not do things right, did we do things right and we learn from them so you don’t repeat mistakes.”
Algonquin Park is located approximately 275 kilometres northeast of Toronto.
With a report from CTV Toronto
