Plaque installed for 12 children who drowned in Quebec boating tragedy 70 years ago
CBC
Seeing her sister Paula's name on a newly unveiled plaque at the place where she died is bringing Gail Millington Grant some long-awaited closure.
"When we were young, we weren't really allowed to talk about [the accident]," she said. "But because of our silence, people didn't know what went on."
On July 13, 1954, 12 young children attending the Negro Community Centre day camp drowned on the Lake of Two Mountains in Île-Bizard in a horrifying boating accident. Millington Grant's six-year-old sister was one of them.
Looking out onto the water Saturday, 70 years after the accident, Millington Grant feels as though she was there.
"I see a boat and I see the water and I do see, even though I wasn't here — I was only two at the time — the children, and I can picture them because I'm kind of afraid of the water myself ever since," she said.
On that day, 62 children headed out from the community centre in Little Burgundy for what should have been a fun picnic on Île-Bizard.
After finishing their lunch, the children were offered a ride on a motorboat by Jack Seligman, a 44-year-old Montreal baker and businessman. He took two groups of children out on his 12-foot boat for a ride without any incident.
On the third trip, 17 children between the ages of six and 11 piled onto the boat, along with a counsellor and Seligman. The boat was designed to hold seven adults.
As the boat circled the waters, its motor flooded and a wave swept over it, causing the younger children to panic, scream and jump into the water. The boat then capsized completely, with everyone aboard falling into the water. None of the children wore life jackets, and most of them didn't know how to swim.
Seligman was able to save two children, the counsellor was able to save a boy and a passing rowboat rescued two more, but 12 children never came back to shore. It remains one of this country's worst boating tragedies.
David Tagieff, who was 12 years old at the time, remembers seeing kids starting to jump into the water.
"I knew something was wrong," he said, saying that's when he decided to grab a pair of oars and row out to the boat.
"When I got there, there was a girl in the water with her head down. I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to the boat and got her in, she survived," he said.
Tagieff said he had to pry another young boy off the capsized boat's gas tank to get him onto the rowboat and to safety.
Shopping local may be the desire, but affordability might decide where shoppers spend their money this Christmas season.
As classes across New Brunswick pause for the holidays, it’s not yet clear which schools are making a dent in chronic absenteeism — a stubborn post-pandemic trend that mostly afflicts the high school cohort, especially in the Anglophone West school district.
CBC Quebec has launched its Make the Season Kind campaign. It's our annual campaign that focuses on food insecurity, while also celebrating kindness, generosity and community spirit around the province.
Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba will hold a public inquiry as soon as 2026 into the former Progressive Conservative government’s post-election efforts to approve an environmental licence for sand-mining company Sio Silica.
Premier Scott Moe has led the Saskatchewan Party through two straight elections, winning majority governments each time.
Eight weeks after adding a GM BrightDrop van to the fleet of his plumbing and heating business, Marty Salliss has no complaints, only praise.
Nearly half of Alberta’s Grade 6 students failed the provincewide math test in 2024, three years after the province started rolling out its new elementary school curriculum.
Toronto could get new cars on the road whose drivers will never get frustrated by gridlock — because the cars would be driving themselves.
Amidst a cost-of-living crisis, some London-area organizations say they have noticed a decline in donations this holiday season.
Prominent northern leaders have been touting the Arctic economic and security corridor as a "nation-building" project that will bring economic benefits to the two territories it straddles, but others are split on how much good will come out of it.
When the federal government tabled its 2025 budget last month, it included a proposal that tax fraud experts say is long overdue — if also a belated acknowledgement that the Canada Revenue Agency has been repeatedly duped into paying out untold millions in bogus tax refunds to scammers.
Talking with an AI chatbot can successfully convince people to change their votes and could affect the outcome of future elections, according to a new study.
While some are writing wishlists for Santa Claus, a group of Newfoundland and Labrador youth are writing their wishlist for the provincial government.