The first thing I said was, ‘Don’t tell my mother’ about the falls

“You’re young, you do these stupid things. You’re trying to impress the older crowd, or girls. Everybody thinks they’re invincible.

“I was about 10 years old, and we lived close to the Rideau River, but every now and then we’d hike up to Black Rapids, where they would dock boats. They had locks there, and a set of waterfalls adjacent to the locks. Being younger, we would swim off the dock, and we’d watch the older guys swim below and above the falls, which we weren’t allowed to do. But of course when you get away from your parents, you’re allowed to do anything, as long as you don’t get caught.

“So we were getting brave one day and were going to go for a swim above the falls, but nobody was actually going to do it. Of course, I decided that I was going to do it. I got under the falls and it was really neat, watching the falls go over you. You’re standing on this cement ledge that’s all covered in moss. And I’m inching my way over to where there’s a hole where you’d dive into the falls … it’s sort of eroded. And just as I got there, I lost my footing and slipped back onto the cement. I got the wind knocked out of me and I fell into the water. So I couldn’t breathe and I’m in these waterfalls, turning in circles, end over end. I couldn’t catch my breath — I couldn’t do anything. I figured I was going to drown right there. But luckily, one of the older guys had seen what happened, and he came over and reached in and grabbed me by my bathing suit and managed to pull me out. When I got back to my buddies, the first thing I said was, ‘Don’t tell my mother.’”