The long search for Kaden Young
Boy slipped from mom’s arms as they escaped van
Tina Woodrow used to wake up terrified the Grand River had swelled and stolen one of her young children. “My worst nightmare during the spring thaw was one of them was swept away,” she said, at the edge of the river turning over grass and branches and ice with her ski poles, looking for someone else’s child.
Since last week, hundreds of people have volunteered to search for Kaden Young, the three-year-old boy swept into the river in Amaranth Township, 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto. Around 1 a.m. on Feb. 21, as melted snow and heavy rain flooded the river, Ontario Provincial Police say the boy’s mother drove past a road closure sign in dense fog. Her minivan was trapped in the floodwater. As she escaped the vehicle, with her son in her arms, the boy was pulled away. Rescuers managed to save the mother but didn’t find Kaden.
Seven days into the search, Ontario Provincial Police are clear this is a recovery effort, not a rescue. So the searchers — many of them strangers to the boy’s family — know precisely what they stand to find and do it anyway. “You stomach it,” said Tina Woodrow, with burrs stuck to her pants. “You think of the mom, the parents.”
Rev. Janet Jones, from a nearby United church, said she couldn’t bring herself to help in the search at first. She couldn’t bear to be the one to find him. But by Tuesday, as the OPP began to scale back its search effort, Rev. Jones said she changed her mind, closed her office and headed to the boy’s family home by the river where the volunteers signed in.
“If it’s my own kid,” she said, holding a dented broomstick, “I’ve got to do this.”
“It’s called suck it up and deal with it,” said Ron Duncan, who was paired up to search with Rev. Jones. “Let’s find this little guy. It’s for the mother. She’s got to have closure.”
The water subsided significantly by Tuesday, leaving the tall grass on either side of the river combed down like hair. At its peak, the flood deposited chunks of ice in the brush, now 20 or 30 metres from the shore, showing how high the water had been. Each chunk of ice was like a clue, signalling to searchers how far Kaden could be from the river’s edge.
Roughly 200 people volunteered to search on Tuesday. On the weekend, there were more than 500. Rest stations set up along the river offered the searchers food, including soup and hot meals that the boy’s mother cooked herself, as a volunteer told most who stopped at her table at a bridge over the river.
Further down river, Chad Pettipas — a neighbour of the Young family — organized a group of local construction companies to donate excavators to move the ice that had settled near a bridge in a jagged block bigger than
LET’S FIND THIS LITTLE GUY. IT’S FOR THE MOTHER. SHE’S GOT TOHAVE CLOSURE.
a football field. “I want it gone,” he said, looking out at the ice. “Give the helicopter something new to look at.”
Once enough ice was broken up and drifting downstream, emergency personnel were planning on using underwater drones and a dive boat to continue the search.
“Probably he’s not gotten past here,” Const. Paul Nancekivell, an OPP spokesman, said standing on the bridge above the ice buildup, at least 10 kilometres down river from where the minivan slipped into the floodwater. The OPP helicopter used cameras to scan to the bottom of the river and found nothing, so Kaden’s body had to be somewhere along the sides of the river, Nancekivell said.
“He’s here. He’s got to be here,” said Mellissa Tolch, a woman who came in from Kitchener with sandwiches and snacks and cupcakes. “This little boy needs to come out today.”
As of Tuesday evening, Kaden Young had not been found.