Teacher warned not to go on trip, trial hears
Camp director testified she didn’t feel students were ready for canoe trip
The former executive director of a camp where a group of atrisk Toronto high school students went to prepare for a sixday canoe trip to Algonquin Park testified Thursday she told the trip leader it was a mistake to bring them to the wilderness area.
“I did not feel they were ready to go on a canoe trip, or capable of going on a canoe trip,” said Barbara Weeden, who was at Sparrow Lake Camp in June 2017 when it played host to the outdoor orientation of 38 students, including 15-year-old drowning victim Jeremiah Perry.
She was testifying remotely Thursday at the criminal negligence causing death trial of trip leader Nicholas Mills. The 57year-old high school teacher has pleaded not guilty.
On Thursday, prosecutor Anna Stanford asked Weeden to explain why she told Mills, at the end of the two-day, one overnight session, that it was a mistake to proceed with the trip, due to depart from Toronto in a few weeks.
“So many students never having been in deep water, big step for them to go on a canoe trip north of Toronto, there wasn’t enough time spent on canoe skills,” she said. She added that many of the lakes in Algonquin Park are big and “you never know what kind of weather you’re going to get up there.”
But during cross-examination, defence lawyer Phil Campbell suggested Weeden was exaggerating her concern and asked why she didn’t include this important detail in a set of detailed notes she prepared after Perry drowned.
“That’s correct, it’s not written there, I thought it, it’s not written there so I apologize,” she said, adding “that was a stressful time.”
Weeden, who has extensive background leading canoe trips, testified the visit got off to a rocky start, with Mills failing to provide detailed information about the students he was bringing to Sparrow Lake, north of Orillia, and that when he and a busload of students arrived, they were late, causing the planned agenda to be crammed.
There was also a disagreement between Mills and the program director who was in charge of administering a swim test. The students were required to pass as a prerequisite to the Algonquin trip. Weeden wasn’t at the swim test, but was listening via walkie talkie to the program director talking to Mills.
The camp expected to do the swim test, following Ontario field trip guidelines as required by the Toronto District School
Board, but Mills insisted “there was no point in doing that swim test because the majority of them (students) wouldn’t be able to complete it or pass it,” Weeden said.
That made the swim test organizer “quite upset.” They all agreed the less onerous camp swim test would be administered, although anyone doing it wearing a life-jacket would receive an automatic fail, which was supposed to disqualify them from the canoe trip. Perry failed but like others went anyway.
When Wedeen brought students to the shoreline to teach them paddling skills, she decided it was too windy to venture too far out on the lake, something she thought annoyed Mills.The judge-alone trial continues Friday.