Wife, daughter drown at Ontario resort pool

An Ontario man says it only took minutes for him to lose his wife and young daughter in an apparent drowning at a resort northwest of Toronto this week.

“Just 10 minutes and they are gone,” Yiting Gong of Markham, Ont., told CTV Toronto on Wednesday.

Gong, his 34-year-old wife and their fiveyear-old daughter were on vacation at Mountain Springs Resort, near Collingwood, Ont., when tragedy struck Tuesday evening.

Now the grieving father is questioning why the resort does not have anyone supervising the pool. “I don’t know why they don’t have a lifeguard. … They should have a lifeguard to save their life,” Gong told CTV Toronto.

Jennifer Grant, a staff member at the resort, said there are clear signs indicating that the pool is unsupervised.

Provincial police said the two victims were taken to hospital, at which they were pronounced dead.

Ontario Provincial Police Const. Martin Hachey said autopsies were being conducted on Wednesday.

Barbara Byers, the Canadian Lifesaving Society’s public education director, said “there is less than one per cent of the drownings that happen in a public pool where a lifeguard is supervising.

Private backyard pools are the primary setting where children under five years old usually drown.