Grief flows endlessly
A boy full of mirth and mischief, kindness and confidence, Vimy Grant died as the sun set on the first Friday in July. He leaped into the water from the Prince of Wales Bridge and never resurfaced. His family and friends are now trying to come to terms with that terrible accident — and navigate their river of grief.
The Prince of Wales Bridge no longer matches the grandeur of its name.
For decades, its heavy stone piers have been ripe with graffiti, its steel trusses coated in rust. Entrances have been barricaded since 2016 to keep people away from its ramshackle temptations.
Built 140 years ago, at a time when the railroad was king, the bridge has amassed dense layers of controversy and tragedy.
Construction began in 1879, financed by the Quebec government, to complete a rail line connecting Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa. The project was slowed first by a labour strike and then by a fatal accident.
On May 15, 1880, a flat-bottomed scow used to bring lumber to the construction site cut loose from a tug boat. Two men were still on board the scow: One jumped into the water and swam to a log boom; the other man, Louis Berthiaume, hesitated.
He stayed on the scow as it was carried downstream and tipped into the river swollen by spring meltwater. Berthiaume was carried over Chaudière Falls to his death.
Despite the fatal mishap and other near misses — three scows went over the falls during construction — the bridge opened for duty in December 1880. It was the first rail link between Gatineau and Ottawa.
Initially known as the Chaudière Railway Bridge, it was sold to Canadian Pacific Railway and renamed in honour of Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, who would ascend the throne as Edward VII.
By 1920, the bridge was out of date: It was not strong enough to support new, heavier locomotives. The CPR had to substitute lighter engines before its trains crossed the bridge.
The chairman of Ottawa's planning commission announced in 1922 that the bridge would have to be repaired or replaced. Noulan Cauchon argued that it should be converted to accommodate cars and pedestrians.
It marked the beginning of a lurching civic debate that continues to this day: What should be done with the Prince of Wales Bridge?
For a time, the CPR settled that question when it rebuilt the bridge in 1926 and renewed its role as a rail crossing. Only the piers went untouched in the $750,000 makeover.
For as long as it has spanned the river, the bridge has lured sightseers, commuters and thrill-seekers, and for almost as long, authorities have been trying, unsuccessfully, to stop them.
In May 1939, Ottawa magistrate Glenn Strike issued a warning to the public to stay off the bridge after nine men were arrested on its tracks. Court heard that trains often had to slow down so that pedestrians could climb onto girders to avoid them.
In August 1947, one train conductor was confronted by someone sitting in the middle of the bridge. The man stood up, waved and jumped into the river as the train approached; he swam a few strokes and disappeared into the rapids. The body of Aldoris Lafrance, 29, was recovered days later: That he had $151.80 and a fancy watch in his pocket only added to his mystery.
As the railway era faded mid- century, many in Ottawa wondered why the city was still organized around train tracks that streamed into its downtown station. National capital planners said the tracks should be consolidated, and the city's rail bridges — the Prince of Wales and Alexandra — made into roads.
Tracks were steadily torn up, and the Alexandra Bridge was dedicated to commuter traffic when Ottawa's Union Station closed in 1966.
That left the Prince of Wales Bridge once again as the only rail link between Ottawa and Gatineau. But trains were disappearing: The last passenger train crossed the bridge in 1981, and the final freight train followed two decades later.
Ever since, the increasingly decrepit bridge has been a platform for one scheme after another. A Gatineau group wanted it used for commuter trains; others called for it to be converted into a roadway to relieve bridge congestion; still others said it should be renovated for pedestrians and cyclists.
In 2005, the City of Ottawa bought the bridge and its rail corridors for $11 million based on the belief they could be used to link the O-Train network with a light-rail system in Gatineau. But Gatineau wasn't much interested and then a series of reports found the bridge wasn't suitable for such a role anyway. Last year, Mayor Jim Watson said the bridge would never be used as a transit link.
It means, one century after it was first raised, the question is once again on the table: What should be done with the Prince of Wales Bridge?
In a normal summer, 14-year-old Vimy Grant would visit his Calgary relatives in July then attend hockey camp in August. But the pandemic cancelled his plans, and so he was home when Theo and Jackson texted him on the afternoon of July 3: They were biking on the trails behind Dulude Arena.
Vimy joined them — he was wearing flip flops and baggy red shorts — and the boys hammered up and down the trails on their mountain bikes. Later, they stopped in at Vimy's mother's house to grab something to drink. Both his parents were there, and as always, he gave them a hug before charging out the door again.
“Love you, mom.”
“Be safe,” she said.
The trio biked to a favoured spot on the Ottawa River where a tree bent out over the water. They splashed in the river for a while, then Jackson went home to water a neighbour's garden. Vimy and Theo carried on to the Richmond Road Circle K where they met another friend, Thomas, and biked to
a girl's house nearby.
They still had a couple of hours to fill before curfew expired.
A plan was struck to go back to the bridge, so the four biked to the island and crawled through the fence behind the dog park. It was 8 p.m.
The Prince of Wales Bridge is actually two bridges: one that spans the river between the Ottawa shore and Lemieux Island, and the second, longer one that connects Lemieux Island to Gatineau. The four friends walked onto the northern span, where several clusters of people had gathered. One featured a diver who flipped and somersaulted into the river.
Thomas asked the diver if he would teach him a backflip. After the man demonstrated, Thomas executed a flawless backflip off the deck.
He used a rope to scale the pier back onto the bridge and, pumped by his initial success, Thomas tried a double backflip. This time, he made it halfway through the second rotation and landed flat on his back. “It didn't sound too nice,” remembers Theo, “but he was OK.”
The sun was setting. The boys began to gather up their shirts and shoes to bike home when Vimy announced he wanted to go off the top of the bridge.
Vimy asked Theo to go up with him. “No way,” Theo told him. “I did that once already. I'm alright.” Theo had vowed never to go off the top again.
Then another young man on the bridge spoke up: “I'll go up with you,” he told Vimy.
Theo says no one pressured Vimy to go off the top. Jackson, too, says no one made Vimy feel he had to prove anything to anyone: “I think he wanted to prove something to himself,” he says.
Vimy and the young man climbed hand over hand, foot over foot, up the diagonal girder to the top of the bridge, where there's a small platform. The instructor showed Vimy how to jump up and out from the bridge. He waited in the water for Vimy to make his leap.
“Holy f---, this is high,” Vimy said as he sat on the platform, gathering courage.
Those who have made the jump say that once you're on top of the truss bridge, it's next-to-impossible to climb back down since any slip would send you crashing to the deck. The next best option is a pencil dive.
“You just can't look down,” says Jackson.
“It's a lot higher up there than it looks,” says Theo.
The top girder is about three storeys above the water: almost 40 feet (12 metres).
Vimy's feet rested on a small lip underneath the platform, which had room enough only for his heels and arches. His hands were on the platform beside him. His friends were anxious to leave: The sun was going down. Curfew was staring them in the face.
It was 9:10 p.m.
Vimy went for it. Theo says Vimy pushed off with his hands instead of using his legs to jump. It pitched his body forward as he dropped toward the river. He hit the water at an angle, face down.
“I knew he'd be hurt just by the way he landed,” says Theo.
Everyone waited a few heartbeats for Vimy to pop up and laugh about the escapade. But there was only the whisper of moving water.
“Go get him! Go get him!” Theo yelled to the instructor, who was close to where Vimy had landed. Nothing.
“That's when I knew something
was wrong,” says Theo. He jumped into the river.
Theo opened his eyes in the murk desperately searching for a glimpse of Vimy's red shorts. There was nothing. The instructor floated downstream with the current, looking for air bubbles, for motion. Nothing. Theo dove down again and again near the bridge, looking for any sign of Vimy Grant.
The instructor's girlfriend called 911.
Twilight turned to darkness on the bridge.
Losing a child is a damnable thing, a personal tragedy against which all others pale. Grief flows endlessly, like a river in the night.
“A sudden death, at that age, it's the worst of the worst,” says Vimy's mother, Eilis.
His dad Justin was on the couch with Isla, his six-year-old daughter from a second marriage, when the police knocked on the door, and told him that his son was missing in the river.
“This is the worst part of my job,” the officer said.
A similar scene unfolded at Eilis's door. She held out hope Vimy was somewhere on the river bank with a broken leg, waiting to be found.
They both went to the river to look for him. Friends and co-workers joined them in the days that followed. Late on Monday afternoon, his body was discovered near Albert Island, north of the Canadian War Museum.
Vimy's death set his parents on a winding, desolate journey.
“Why do we have to go through this?” asks Eilis. “They were just being kids.”
Some days, Vimy's dachshund, Chesil, is the only thing that can force Eilis out of bed: “No day is a good day,” she says. “It's either bad or worse.”
Eilis has managed her grief by embracing her only son even tighter. It feels better, she says, to think about him. And so, every day, Eilis posts another picture of him on Facebook: There's Vimy snuggling with Chesil; Vimy with his hockey medal in Syracuse; Vimy in his football uniform; Vimy in his Calgary Flames gear; Vimy at the outdoor rink; Vimy on the ice with the Golden Knights; Vimy hanging with friends; Vimy in his Adidas sweats.
There's also Vimy's card on Mother's Day: “Love you so much,” it reads. “I miss you when I'm not with you even for one second. Thanks for everything.”
Justin has found that, unlike other tragedies in his life, he can't compartmentalize Vimy's death.
“It's just hard, everything about it,” he says. “Maybe with time, the memories will be enjoyable, but all they do now is remind me of loss.”
Their grief is salted with anger. Eilis says she can't understand why it was so easy for Vimy and his friends to gain access to something as perilous as the Prince of Wales Bridge.
“Why should that bridge still be standing there? Why was it open every time they visited? It should have been torn down or cemented shut a long, long time ago,” she says. “This could have been prevented. This did not have to happen.”
Says Justin: “I want to see that thing closed or destroyed. Some Mickey Mouse fence that kids can get through? That's not appropriate. That's a dangerous river.”
Vimy's friend Jackson says the city should tear the bridge down or turn it into a pedestrian crossing. “Just don't fence it off because then it compels kids to go,” he says. “There's no one there — so it's a perfect spot for kids.”
Theo stayed on the bridge until 11 p.m. on the night Vimy disappeared as the police searched the river. “It still doesn't feel real,” he says of his friend's death. “I miss those 2 a.m. texts to hop on Fortnite. I miss his laugh. Hockey is hard not having him there. It's still hard to imagine that life has to move forward without him.”
If Vimy had survived his leap, it would have become another shared memory, another bit of mortar in the boys' friendship. Instead, it was an undoing, a deep and lasting fracture.
Theo, Jackson and Felix are among five boys who have all tattooed a red and black `V' on the inside of their ankles to honour their friend, the boy called Vimy.
Felix says he misses Vimy's goofiness, his boundless energy and his physical presence: He was always someone you could talk to about things. School. Girls. Sports. Life.
“Not having that anymore, it hurts,” he says. “It was all of us together and now he's not here. You turn around and you think he's going to be standing right there.”
Why was (the bridge) open every time they visited? It should have been torn down or cemented shut. ... This could have been prevented.