There One Moment, Gone The Next...

Ottawa Fire Chief John deHooge: "Don't let your kid, don't let your pets, don't let your family go on the ice."

What does it take to instill a note of caution into peoples' awareness of what they're about to embark upon? That old adage that familiarity breeds contempt is no more accurate than when we hear - twice in the space of a week - that two experienced ice fishermen have been involved in deaths on the Ottawa River. Perhaps it's also true that we "get too soon old and too late smart".

In any event, those who feel familiar with nature's capricious changes all too often feel more confident than they should, under circumstances they cannot control.

Last week it was a feckless younger man who had grown up to adulthood familiar with ice conditions in the winter and feeling sufficiently confident about those conditions despite a mild winter and earlier-than-normal thawing, to place himself and his girlfriend (and his dog) at risk, resulting in the death of his 37-year-old girlfriend and his trusting dog, when his truck sank with them inside, unable to free themselves.

This week it's another river ice-fishing enthusiast and old-timer.

This time the accident occurred not near Aylmer, Quebec, but close to Petrie Island in the Orleans section of Ottawa, where well over one hundred ice fishing huts are placed on the ice, and the man who lost his life, Jocelyn Belanger, was considered by the ice-fishing community to have been the most seasoned, knowledgeable, experienced among them.

When you have that kind of reputation you just have to live up to it.

And Mr. Belanger attempted to do just that. He'd already safely removed his own ice shack and turned his attention to that of a friend, a newer, more costly hut its owner said that anyone who retrieved it could take possession of. In the company of friends, Mr. Belanger drove his truck onto the ice, when its back wheels began to sink, whereupon one companion told him to cease trying to free it, and wait while another truck was brought over to pull his out.

When his remaining friend who stayed with him turned around momentarily after Mr. Belanger exited his truck, it appeared that the deteriorated ice around the back of the truck gave way and Mr. Belanger dropped through the resulting ice mash. "They didn't see [him] go down, but when they turned around, he was gone." Another wasted life, another needless, careless, readily avoidable death.

Experience should have whispered in Mr. Belanger's ear that he was being foolhardy. Reputation coaxed him to rise to the occasion. And then it took police divers almost two days to find the man's body and bring it to the surface. "It's like looking in pea soup. It's like looking in mud - you feel for everything", according to the head of the Ottawa police dive team, describing the search through murky, slushy half-ice, half-water.

During the search underwater, twice police divers got stuck themselves under the ice and had to be pulled free by surface crew. "The fear was we were going to get our divers stuck. Obviously, we don't want to risk their lives." It was explained by the police spokesperson that the divers faced the risk of themselves becoming pinned under the man's truck, or trapped under the ice in the fast-flowing water.

It does not, after all, take a logistical genius to figure out the odds. When conditions are so questionable, the better road to take is one of caution. Lady Luck is not always on the alert to lend a helping hand to those who gamble with their lives.