U of T student who drowned at Minden camp could not swim
The family of an 18-year-old University of Toronto student who drowned during a schoolregulated engineering camp has identified him as Anand Baiju and said he couldn’t swim.
Baiju was attending the U of T Survey Camp on Gull Lake near Minden, about 100 kilometres north of Peterborough, when he died Tuesday.
Emergency services said they responded the area at roughly 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday. The teen was pulled from the lake and transported by paramedics to the Haliburton Highlands Health Services hospital in Minden, where he was pronounced dead, according to Sgt. Peter Leon of Haliburton Highlands OPP detachment.
Baiju was a civil engineering student at U of T who was excited to embark on his second year of studies, his uncle Manoj Gopinath said in an interview Thursday.
Gopinath said Baiju had already purchased back-to-school items in anticipation of his new year. Now they sit untouched in shopping bags, Gopinath said, and his nephew will never get the chance to use them.
“He bought five or six dress shirts, pants, shoes, perfumes ... all with his own money.”
Baiju worked two part time jobs to pay for his tuition and support his family, Gopinath said. “He was really hard working. He was a really ambitious kid.”
Gopinath isn’t entirely sure how the incident took place, and that he has only received official information from police.
“We are still in the dark.”
He said he has heard a few different versions of the incident and wants to find out what actually happened to his nephew.
According to Leon, Baiju was in the water with friends when he drowned.
“I understand he was in the water with friends; he became separated from them, at which point they made an attempt to locate their friend and removed him from the water immediately and started with first aid themselves,” he said.
Gopinath was concerned that there weren’t proper safety precautions in place.
“I have a lot of questions to ask to university authorities regarding this, because it’s not a recreational trip or anything. It’s part of the study program,” he said.
“They had been taken to their facility. It’s not a public area.”
Cristina Amon, dean of faculty of applied science and engineering at U of T, said the camp only involved land-related activities and that students were given a list of rules to follow. She could not confirm whether the rules barred students from going in the water.
She said the school is committed to finding out what happened and how to ensure in the future that this situation will never happen to another student or family.
The U of T Survey Camp, built on the 175-acre property that U of T purchased in 1919, has operated since 1920. For two weeks every year over the summer, it trains undergraduate civil and mineral engineering students in land surveying and engineering project management.
At the camp, students, who are about to start their second year, get hands-on skills in topographic mapping, route and construction surveying, as well as concepts like GPS (global positioning systems), integrated water system and geology. Amon said the camp is mandatory for second-year civil engineering students.
Amon said 50 students were partaking in the camp when the incident occurred. She sent a message to staff and students, in which she announced the cancellation of this week’s programming at the camp. Students who were participating in it returned Tuesday night, she said.
“Today, our attention must be with those affected by this terrible tragedy. The thoughts of our entire community are with the family and friends of the student who died,” she wrote.
A GoFundMe page was set up to help raise funds for Baiju’s funeral. By Thursday afternoon 47 people had raised $3,665 of the $20,000 goal.
Gopinath said their family is absolutely destroyed by the loss.
“We are totally devastated,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say. He was the only hope for them. A hope for the whole family.”