Prevent drownings

When 15-year-old Jeremiah Perry drowned on a school canoe trip in early July, the urgent, confounding question was: How could this have happened?

After all, every student on the weeklong trip to Algonquin Provincial Park was required to pass swim and canoe skills tests to participate. As John Malloy, the Toronto District School Board’s director of education, assured reporters at the time, students who were unable to pass the tests weren’t allowed to go. This week, we know different. Tragically, the C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute student was allowed to go on the excursion, though he did not pass the tests. Neither, it turns out, did14 of the other 33 students on the trip from Jefferys Collegiate and Westview Centennial Secondary School.

According to both school policy and good sense, those students should not have been allowed to go on the excursion. “It would appear that our procedures weren’t followed,” Malloy said. That is inexcusable. Making matters worse, more than a month after the teen drowned it still isn’t known why protocols weren’t followed.

Getting to the bottom of what happened could help prevent future accidents. Yet the two teachers involved are now on home assignment and have refused to speak to the board, Malloy said.

Sensibly, the TDSB is not waiting for the results of its investigation, or for those of separate inquiries by the Ontario Provincial Police and the Office of the Chief Coroner, before taking action.

In future, trips will only be approved after the school principal sees and reviews documentation of any tests taken, Malloy announced this week. And all students and their parents will be given the results of the tests.

Meanwhile, Ontario’s education minister, Mitzie Hunter, announced on Thursday that the province will immediately review outdoor education and excursion rules in Ontario to ensure that policies are followed in the future.

All of this is too late for Jeremiah, who came to Canada from Guyana only last October, in search of a brighter future. The board and the province must now ensure that no other student is ever put in such avoidable danger again.

The students who didn’t pass the swim test should not have been allowed to go on the excursion