Solid Cast Keeps Old Hit Fresh

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Book by Burt Shevelove & Larry Glebart
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Performed by Steve Ross, Keith Savage & Company
Directed by Rona Waddington
Drayton Entertainment Production
Huron Country Playhouse, Grand Bend
August 13 to 31, 2008

Live! On Stage!
By Mary Alderson

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum is the fourth and final show of the season at Huron Country Playhouse and with it, Drayton Entertainment has another hit. Staging four musicals in a row has been a departure from the norm for the Grand Bend theatre, but it has certainly been successful. Each production – My Fair Lady, Sorry I’m Canadian, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – has been exceptionally good, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum continues that streak.
The zany farce first opened on Broadway in 1962, and some of the gags are showing their age. However, this excellent cast is able to pull off the humour every time, just because these are very funny people. They bring together all the elements of farce – running in and out of slamming doors, posing as other people, mistaken identities, and just plain silliness. Add to the farce some great singing and dancing and you have a good evening of entertainment.
This was one of Steven Sondheim’s earliest efforts in music and lyrics, and while the songs don’t have the rich storytelling of later Sonheim, they provide plenty of laughs, and the tunes are catchy. The opening number “Comedy Tonight” sets the tone for the show.
Huron Country Playhouse favourite Keith Savage just has to walk on the stage and the audience starts to howl. Savage plays Hysterium, a rather hysterical slave. Another audience pleaser is 80-year-old Kenneth Wickes playing Erronius, who is travelling the world searching for his children who were stolen in infancy by pirates. Wickes only needs to hobble onto the stage and look at the audience to get a laugh.
After several years at Stratford, Londoner Kyle Blair is back at Huron Country Playhouse. With his clear tenor voice and boyish good looks, he is the perfect Hero. The object of his affection is Philia played by Elena Juatco who was last year’s Miss Saigon.
The three Protean who double up in various roles are all very adept at physical comedy. The courtesans from the house of ill repute are amazing dancers and the audience is treated to a sample of their talents. The lovely young ladies are there for those “who have no interest in pirates”.
Each cast member has an impressive biography and extensive experience. The result is a great team with perfect comedic timing, expressive faces and slapstick ability.
Credit goes to director Rona Waddington for selecting this strong cast and giving the show a fresh feel. Choreographer Gino Berti and Music Director Charles T. Couzens also deserve credit for keeping the production lively.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is just plain fun – as the song says “weighty decisions will just have to wait” and there is indeed “something for everyone”.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum continues with eight shows a week until August 31 at Huron Country Playhouse, Grand Bend. Tickets are available at the Huron Country Playhouse box office at (519) 238-6000, Drayton Entertainment at 1-888-449-4463, or check out www.draytonentertainment.com

Mary Alderson offers her view of area theatre in this column on a regular basis. As well as being a fan of live theatre, she is a former journalist who is currently employed with the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations.

History can be fun and entertaining

Oil Rush
Book and Lyrics by Robert More
Music and Lyrics by Jacqueline Sadler
Performed by Sheldon Davis, Cathy Elliott, R.J. Peters & Company
Directed by Robert More
Victoria Playhouse, Petrolia
August 12 to 30, 2008

Live! On Stage!
Review by Mary Alderson

Those of us who grew up in Lambton County take our oil heritage for granted. So, there are oil wells around Petrolia and Oil Springs – so what? Well, enough of that attitude. Robert More and Jacqueline Sadler have brought oil heritage to life on stage at Victoria Playhouse in Petrolia and made it fascinating and funny in their new musical Oil Rush.
More has created an interesting mix of fact and fiction in this lively musical which celebrates 2008 – the 150th anniversary of the world’s first commercial oil well. That’s right – the first oil well in the world – a year ahead of Pennsylvania, and long before Texas, Alberta or the Persian Gulf. It’s a part of Canadian history in which all Canadians, not just those from Lambton County should take pride.
More and Sadler have captured that feeling of pride, using a mix of historical characters and some who are fictional representatives of “everyman”. The story opens in 2008 with two teenagers (Joseph O’Toole and Trisha Smith) visiting the Oil Museum of Canada in Oil Springs. Their search for the past takes us back to 1858, as the early prospectors arrive in Oil Springs to search for this new find called oil.
“Good Bless the Whale” is a clever tune, reminding us that before oil was supplied commercially, whale oil was an important source of light. But this new discovery, oil, could be refined as kerosene, for household lighting. “Possibilities” is a rousing anthem outlining all that can be done with this exciting new product, oil.
Act one takes place in Oil Springs as the village comes alive in the oil rush. Family man Norman C. Dodds arrives to try his luck at finding oil, bringing along his wife Beth. The couple are delightful – him with his idiomatic speech patterns and her with a charming French Canadian accent. Sheldon Davis is excellent as Norman. He’ll be remembered as the newspaper editor in Soup Du Jour at VPP and the klutzy golfer in The Foursome at Playhouse II in Grand Bend. Cathy Elliott plays Beth very well – furious at Norman for endangering himself in an oil well explosion, at the same time elated that he has survived intact. We enjoy watching Norman and Beth raise their family, through oil booms and busts, until their eldest son goes off to Borneo as a foreign driller. This is a factual part of the story – Petrolia’s “Hard Oilers” travelled to all parts of the world teaching others how to drill for black gold.
The history is told by R. J. Peters playing the role of a newspaper reporter from the Toronto Globe. The young reporter is sent out to write about the oil rush, and Peters does an excellent job as narrator.
In Act II, the action moves to Petrolia as it grows from a population of 200 to 2,000 in nine months, during the oil rush. With the boom comes bar room brawls and a lady of the night who earns her living keeping the prospectors happy.
The trio of Shawn Henry, Craig Maguire and Scott Pietrangelo provide harmony in many of the musical numbers, and comedy as they finish each other’s sentences playing Homer, Harry, and Hector. All three have beautiful voices. Shawn Henry also doubles as the real-life figure J. H. Fairbank, Lambton County’s first oil baron. It’s interesting to note that J. H. Fairbank’s 16-year-old great-great grandson, Charlie Fairbank, has a role as a teen boy in this production, and shows very promising talent. Another talented local teenager, Sabrina Redick, also appears.
Heather Lea Brown skilfully plays several female roles, including that of Edna Fairbank. Her disdain for the backwoods of Petrolia shows through when she sings, “The house could never be a home”.
Greg Campbell handles multiple roles well, making each character unique. He has a charming Irish lilt as Hugh Nixon Shaw and then shows his comedic skills as Shaky, the alcoholic who fractures the oil wells with nitro-glycerine.
Robert More has tied together a great deal of information in an interesting story line. A slideshow of old postcards provides a good view of the reality that was the oil rush. Crude derricks springing up, streets filled with mud and oil, and then the lavish Fairbank mansion.
The lighting for Oil Rush is possibly the best designed at VPP. Each explosion and fire is bathed in orange and red. Kerry Gage’s choreography is well suited to the show – from the influence of square dances and Irish jigs, through to energetic numbers to lift everyone’s spirits.
Oil Rush received an immediate standing ovation on opening night, and probably the loudest applause ever heard in VPP. Congratulations to Robert More and Jacqueline Sadler for putting together a show that educates, entertains and instils pride. This musical will not only make residents of Lambton County take interest in their oil heritage, but should arouse the curiosity of all Canadians. .
Oil Rush continues with eight shows a week at Victoria Playhouse Petrolia until August 30. Call the box office at 1-800-717-7694 or (519) 882-1221 for tickets.

Mary Alderson offers her view of area theatre in this column on a regular basis. As well as being a fan of live theatre, she is a former journalist who is currently employed with the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations.

John Byrne interview re: Grand Bend beach lifeguards

If it is foreseeable, it is preventable.
- Lifesaving Society Canada, Ontario Branch

This is the third year in a row someone has drowned at Grand Bend, and each drowning happened after lifeguards went off duty. To help prevent deaths in the future, Lambton Shores last fall commissioned a Lifesaving Society report, and recently purchased life rings, a measure witnesses believe could have helped save at least one of the victims. The Lifesaving Society has audited the facility, will review policies and procedures, and will interview staff. Their report is due this fall. Typically they recommend lifeguards or rescue equipment. The Grand Bend Strip spoke with Lambton Shores Chief Administrative Officer John Byrne about the situation.

Casey Lessard: I understand you are buying life rings for the beach. What is the status of that?
John Byrne: They went up last Friday (Aug. 1). There are four stations, and we bought a dozen of them in anticipation that some of them will be stolen, and one was stolen that very evening. We’re just replacing them to keep them stocked until we get the report from the Lifesaving Society and can plan for this for future years. It’s an interim measure at this point. They’re about $100 a piece.
The Lifesaving Society was seen as a measure of saying, Okay, let’s do this thoroughly and have professionals come in and objectively look at this and see what can we do to improve things. They were also asked, Look, if there are things that are obvious to you and that we should be doing immediately, please let us know and we’ll do those; don’t wait for the final report. As it turns out, there was a tragic event in tragic circumstances. Certainly a life ring is something people can go to. It’s a lot more difficult than what meets the eye in turns of running to get a life ring and tossing it in time to get it to somebody. I don’t want to say it’s to pacify anybody, but it’s certainly there and we’re going to see if the Lifesaving Society recommends more, less, or different deployment of those or what.
CL: In terms of lifeguards, what is the view of whether they should be working longer?
JB: That’s all part and parcel of the Lifesaving Society. What we’ve done in terms of a protocol was just follow what preexisted pre-amalgamation, and what was going on previously in Grand Bend, and carried that on. We always interview and talk to the lifeguards before and after seasons to figure out what can we do different, and that’s why we’re changing lifeguard stands and we provided new surfboard equipment and so on and so forth. The frustrating thing is that everybody can come in after the fact and suggest this, that and the other thing. As I said, that’s why we wanted this done professionally by the Lifesaving Society and we’re going to go from there.

CL: So, do you see it as a coincidence that each of the last three years, somebody has died after the lifeguards have gone off-duty.
JB: Again, let me ask you the question, what time should they be on in your mind?
CL: My attitude is, if there are people on the beach in a strong enough mass of numbers…
JB: What’s that number for you? Again, these are all subjective things. It’s easy to say, but you come down there, you look around and see that there are no lifeguards sitting in the lifeguard stands. Does that register with you that maybe there are no lifeguards on duty, number one. You look at the water conditions, the high wave activity going, Gee, I’m not sure that’s the safest place to go swimming. Or do you just throw caution to the wind and go running into the lake saying, Let’s see what will happen?
CL: But a lot of people will swim until sundown, and I think sundown is a reasonable…
JB: This isn’t a budgetary thing at all as some people have implied. It’s based on what has happened before. For most people, families and so forth, that’s the dinner hour and they’re less likely to access the beach after hours.

CL: The Lifesaving Society has said they leave it up to the municipality based on the statistics they have…
JB: I haven’t read the report. I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t talked to them either. We’re leaving them free to interview us and I haven’t heard a thing from them in terms of what they’re recommending.
CL: They allow the municipality to decide based on statistics you collect on how much your beach is used, so do you keep track of those stats based on the number of people who are using the parking lots or the number of people that come to the town?
JB: The lifeguards make assessments all the time. That’s why they expand or shrink their coverage areas, and they notify people to move in and deploy their lifeguards accordingly. There’s a certain deployment during the week and at weekends and holiday weekends they ramp up their lifeguard decisions they make. We don’t interfere with how they’re going to be doing it. If the lifeguards came back to us and said, We need to be on until 9 o’clock, we’d present that to council and see whether we can do it.
CL: So what is the turnaround time on that? If they want to be on beyond 5 o’clock any day, do they have to come to council and wait for a council meeting to decide that, or do they have the authority to do that?
JB: Well, again, I couldn’t answer that. You have to think about that. Are you suggesting that we give total attitude to lifeguards to determine their hours of deployment? They try to work with us…
CL: You just said you give them discretion to decide what their deployment is. Who’s deciding their deployment then?
JB: They decide their deployment meaning where they’re dispersed on the beach.
CL: My point is, if there are still 10,000 people on the beach at 5 o’clock, do the lifeguards leave?
JB: The lifeguards will announce on the PA system that they’re done. There are different hours for the weekend.
You could fence the beach off. Tell everybody to get off the beach, lock the gates and walk away. Do you think somebody’s not going to climb that fence after hours and go in swimming? And are we responsible for that? So should we have 24-hour surveillance and security people around there? This is why we’re trying to figure out what’s the reasonable thing to do. Let’s get it right, let’s not fly by the seat of our pants and react to things. Let’s figure out from the professionals what we should be doing.

CL: So what is the municipality’s measure of liability when drownings happen in Lambton Shores water?
JB: There’s always a liability… again… you know, we don’t determine where liability comes. If people want to sue the municipality for something that has occurred, that is their right to do. The courts will sort out and attribute liability. That’s not something we assess. We’re not making decisions based on that. It’s, Are we doing the right things? We think based on past experience, past discussions with lifeguards, the response has been reasonable. You get extreme circumstances. Do the municipality and the council feel terrible about a drowning on the beach? What do you think? (pause) What do you think?
CL: You can tell me.
JB: (sighs) Okay.
CL: I used to be a lifeguard at a pool and we were always on until 8 o’clock.
JB: And what happens if someone climbs the fence at 8:30? We’ve had people drown at pools, too. They jump the fence after hours and so forth. There’s no easy answers to this. There’s no perfect solution. That’s why we’re working with professionals. We’ll see what the report says, and we’re going to implement their recommendations.

CL: Does it not seem like a little too much time goes by between commissioning a report last November and getting a report after this summer?
JB: Does council wish it could be faster? Sure.
CL: You were saying earlier that it’s not a budgetary issue…
JB: It’s not a budgetary issue. This is not a matter where we’re putting people at risk for the sake of the limited amount of dollars that we’re spending on this thing. That’s foolish. Council’s never made such a decision to say, Let’s risk this and cut it back here. They’ve always followed through and that’s why we have these reports from the lifeguards about what’s going on and what we can do to improve.

While Byrne did not have figures on hand, we followed up with an email asking for specifics, and received these responses:
1) Lifeguard hours during the week and on weekends/holiday weekends?
Noon to 5 p.m. Mon.-Thurs. and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fri, Sat, & Sun and holiday Mondays.

2) Start and end date for lifeguard season?
Lifeguards start the 2nd last Friday of June till Labour Day Monday.

3) Peak number of vehicles parked in beachfront lots this summer or last, during lifeguard hours and during off-duty hours?
No data available.

4) Average pay per hour for a lifeguard at Grand Bend?
Wages for lifeguards range between $15.00 to $18.00 per hour.

5) Total income from beachfront parking lots for the year?
We generate approximately $350,000.00 from the parking lots each year depending on weather, but it must be kept in mind that these revenues are not necessarily beach specific as they serve the downtown commercial areas as well. The monies generated go to offset operating costs and retiring of capital debt for the Beach House etc.

6) Current budget for lifeguards per year?
The Beach Patrol Budget is about $48,000.00 annually.

How much is your child’s life worth?

View from the Strip
By Casey Lessard

I didn’t ask Richard and Anna Kovar how much they would be willing to pay to bring their daughter Jule back to life; instead, I’ll put the question to you. If you were able to give money to revive your child, would you pay $20,000, $50,000, $100,000, $1 million?
This is not a budgetary issue, as Lambton Shores CAO John Byrne says (see following interview). If the budget were your family’s, you would find the money, right? And you would find it right now instead of thinking about it and waiting for someone to tell you it’s the right thing to do.
So why is it, then, that Lambton Shores continues to wait for a report from a professional body analyzing the situation at Grand Bend beach before it makes a real move to secure the safety of swimmers at the beach? I’m sorry, but a few life rings are not enough.
The fact is, a life ring is useless if there is no one on the beach to throw it to a person who is drowning. Like the saying about a tree falling in the forest, if someone drowns when the beach is empty, does anybody see?
I’m surprised that no one has the foresight to say, until a report is done this fall, that we will go above and beyond the minimum (life rings) to make sure our residents and guests are safe. I use the word guest because that’s what a tourist is. They’re not strangers who don’t deserve our attention. They are guests whose money we want, yet whose safety we cannot ensure. Worse yet, the guests who we fail the most are those who are most vulnerable: young people like Elizabeth Tse, 20, Jule Kovar, 14, and Ryan Albrecht, 17.
What is the best we can do until the report comes in? In a 2001 United States report called Lifeguard Effectiveness: A Report of the Working Group, commissioned by the National Center for Injury Prevention and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers found that the chance of drowning at a beach patrolled by lifeguards is less than one in 18 million per year. In one example, the study - compiled using statistics from the U.S. Lifesaving Association - noted that in 1990, five people drowned on Memorial Day at American Beach in Nassau County, Florida, one year after lifeguards were removed because of budgetary restraints. A short time later, lifeguards returned and the number of drownings dropped to zero for the eight years leading up to the report’s release.
Grand Bend’s lifeguards are on duty five hours a day during the week and seven hours a day on weekends (12 noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday and holiday Mondays). Friday morning, when our cover shot was taken, there were still none on the beach at 9:20, and there were people swimming in very rough conditions. Among them were Jacey Gardner (on cover) and her friend Breanne Johnston, both 14, of Windsor. They were attracted to the waves for “the rush,” Johnston said. “It’s fun because it makes for bigger waves,” Gardner added.
Where would those girls be if Stephanie Donaldson and I were not meeting there that morning? And they weren’t the only ones swimming in the 3’-4’ waves; we also saw a woman with her two young children and a man with his toddler.
Lifeguards are more than rescuers. In fact, their most important role may be to prevent swimmers from putting themselves in danger in the first place. Why do people keep drowning here? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the last three victims have drowned after lifeguards go off duty.
With a season that runs from the end of June to Labour Day in September, the beach patrol costs the municipality $48,000 per year. That’s not much when you consider that the town brings in $350,000 annually from its parking lots. Even a round-the-clock patrol wouldn’t equal the income from people visiting Grand Bend.
If stores were being robbed on Main Street, or pedestrians being stabbed, would the police put a set of handcuffs on the station wall after hours? Surely someone would see a trend and step up patrols. Don’t our beachgoers deserve the same treatment?
The Kovars are waiting for an answer.

Jule Kovar tribute: “The house is so quiet without Jule”

Although he is a neurologist and she is an attorney, Dr. Richard and Anna Kovar live a modest life in a home in Fort Gratiot, Michigan, a borough of Port Huron, just over the bridge from Sarnia. Their daughter Jule drowned August 8, 2007 just north of the pier at Grand Bend beach.
Casey Lessard traveled to Fort Gratiot the day before the one year anniversary of her death.
“I lived with her every day,” Jule’s brother Russell says. “I’d come home and she was here. I woke up and she was here. The thing I notice the most is when I wake up and go downstairs, and I pass her door. I think what’s there and what used to be there.”

As told to Casey Lessard

Richard Kovar: It was a beautiful, blissful, carefree summer. All the girls were looking forward to ninth grade, going into high school. Everybody was focused on that and enjoying the summer while we still had it.
Anna Kovar: This stopped everybody and everything and brought everybody into a state of shock.
The house is so quiet without Jule. She was so bubbly and effervescent. She couldn’t be here without you knowing she was here. Everything is so sedate and quiet now. It’s not the same house anymore.

Anna: She was a very easy birth. The thing I remember about her from her birth until the time she died, she was a happy, happy girl. She woke up every morning with a smile on her face; a big, bright smile. Good morning, mama. Happy. Singing. She would come out of bed singing and dancing and jumping and leaping. I think what everyone will say that when she was in a room, she was just energy. She was like glitter. She was always there. She had so much energy and happiness.
We moved to Port Huron when Jule was a year and a half, and Russell was three. We avoided buying several of the houses we looked at because they were on water and I didn’t want the kids to drown. Because we lived in a town where there was a lot of water, my husband and I wanted to make sure they were good swimmers, so we took them to the YMCA every year and had them take swim classes until they were really strong. And Jule had tremendous upper body strength. She used to do the monkey bars and try to see how many times she could go back and forth without stopping. It was an incredible amount of times.
Richard: That came from wrestling with her brother, I think. They were very physical. The usual. They loved each other; they were best of friends and worst of enemies sometimes.
Anna: They were both tall and athletic. Jule was 5’8 1/2” and she wasn’t done growing yet. She was an excellent tennis player, as is Russell. She played volleyball, and played travel soccer when she was younger.
Richard: At school, she was smart when she worked at it, and when she was distracted, which was frequently, she had to be kept to task.
Anna: She was a very creative person. If you have ever known people that creative, sometimes it was so easy for her to get distracted by this thing or that thing. She went to Montessori for preschool, and I remember one time I came to pick her up when she was four years old. They used to make these world maps where they would cut out the continents with pins and then paste them on this map and label the continents and oceans. The teacher met me at the door and said, ‘I can’t believe what your daughter did today.’ She started at the beginning and her goal was to finish her world map. She didn’t talk to anybody, she didn’t go to the washroom, she didn’t eat her snack. That was very unusual because she was a social butterfly.
Richard: But she was a detail person at the same time. She used to come up to me with an envelope filled with paper that she had cut into tiny, tiny pieces. She’d look at me really proud. ‘Dad, look what I did!’
Anna: She wanted to be a fashion designer. She had little drawings of fashion design and she was going to start a fashion design company with her friends. She redid her room. I had given her a bedroom set, which was my dream because I grew up poor; it was this antique bedroom set with a white sleigh bed, and she said, ‘Mom, I’m not like that. I’m modern.’ So she redesigned her room with one wall yellow, one wall apricot orange, one wall lime green and the last pink. At first we thought, ugh. But it looks fabulous. She picked out her furniture, which was very modern. She had a great sense of style and she was always dressed in her sense of style, which was always really cool.
Richard: I thought she had a great sense of style. She would dress me.
Anna: She was an artist as well. When she was in 5th grade, she joined an art club and did these detailed drawings of animals, and the art teacher was so impressed with her, she said ‘I would really like to do a summer study with her because she has a lot of talent.’
Richard: I was looking forward to seeing her develop as a person. With all of the creative ideas that she had, we had a hard time containing her creativity and diversity without suppressing her.
Anna: She was an extremely talented tennis player and we were looking forward to her going to high school because the tennis coach promised her a spot on the varsity tennis team. Russell is a state doubles tennis champ, so that’s something we were all excited about.

Typical summer
Richard: She used to tell me, Dad, I live to socialize. That’s what she did. She played volleyball with her friends. She had just finished playing tennis in the Robinson, a big tournament here.
Anna: She was supposed to play in a tournament here the week she went to Grand Bend, but she didn’t want to because her friend, who lives in Sarnia and who she ended up going on this trip with, wanted to do a social thing. Her mother was going to take them shopping in Grand Bend, and so, being a softie mother, I let her get out of the tournament.
Richard: It was just a sleepover. She left Tuesday, slept over in Sarnia and then Wednesday they went to Grand Bend swimming and having fun on the town. They played mini-golf and went back to the beach after.

Waiting for a call
Anna: There was a change in our plans and her friend Lindsey was coming over to stay, so I had to let Jule know that no matter what time she got back Wednesday night, I was going to pick her up from Sarnia. I called and the father was home at five o’clock after work, and he said he didn’t have anyway of getting in touch with them because they didn’t have cell phones. He said they might stay late at the beach, but he would tell them to call when they got home, no matter how late. I was up waiting for the call when the policeman came knocking on the door.
I was the only one home. The police officer came to the door with my neighbour and I could tell from the look on my neighbour’s face that something really awful had happened. The first thought was that my son was in some mischief, but he was at someone’s house, so I thought that’s not possible. Then they told me. My first thought was, not Jule; anything but that. I spent an hour trying to locate Richard.
Richard: I was just in my office working late and it was close to 10:30.
Anna: I didn’t look for you there because you’re never there that late.
Richard: I get a page from the hospital emergency department. I called home and I talked to the officer who answered the phone. He said, just come home. So I was thinking the same thing, it’s Russell.
Anna: And he’s never been in trouble!
Richard: I was just crazy by the time I got home. He met me in the driveway and told me…
Anna: This entire town stopped. Within half an hour, all of my friends were here. I was paralyzed. My friend Lori stayed at my side for a week. My friends were helping me do whatever I needed to do. We ended up driving to the hospital in Exeter.
Richard: We had to see her. We couldn’t just believe somebody that she was dead. We talked to the ER doctor and Officer Finch, who was on duty at the time.
Anna: The mother who was with them was so horribly devastated. Here you are, responsible for someone’s kids and something like this happens. She was in an emotional state that was near hysteria. She was still in her bathing suit at midnight. They didn’t know what our response would be, like would we blame them? It was just something horrible having to see Jule. She was already stiff. You want to hug her, and her body was cold and stiff. It was so horrible to be in that situation.
What happened after we got back was the most amazing thing. The entire house was full of people and food and flowers. The funeral director, who’s been doing this his entire life, said he’d never seen anything like it. There were hundreds of people. The whole funeral home was full of flowers. Over 800 people came to the funeral home and the church service. We kept receiving cards from people for months.
Richard: I think the community had not experienced something like that for a while. It was a shock. Just tragic.

Understanding the tragedy
Anna: I’ve never had a chance to talk to anyone who was there.
Richard: We called Richie Laflamme a few times but he wasn’t there. We still want to talk to him, but we can’t find the number anymore.
Officer Finch told me that she started to get in trouble and Richie was with his date on the pier. He asked her, Do you need help? Are you in trouble? She said no, and then said, Yes! I could see her doing that because she wouldn’t want to cause a problem.
He jumped in to try to help her and the waves were too much. (He had to be rescued himself).
Anna: I’m pretty sure she and her friend started playing in the waves further down where it was safer. We come from Long Island where there’s an ocean, so we know what this is about and she didn’t. The waves kept pushing her closer and closer to the corner.
Richard: Closer and closer to the sea wall. There were 3’ waves, we heard. I went out there on a calm day, waded up to my waist in the sand bar, and I started walking down to the pier. As I got about 15’ from the pier, all of a sudden, it got deeper and deeper until there was nothing under my feet. I started swimming toward the pier and I felt this cold sensation. I tried touching the bottom and couldn’t at that point. I went over to the pier and there were a couple of ladders, but they were very difficult to pick out because they’re rusted like the sea wall. I ended up climbing out using one of the ladders.

On the beach
Anna: I think there’s a need for lifesaving equipment on the pier and on the beach all the time, and I think during the summer tourist months, there should be lifeguards longer hours because kids love to swim. It was still very warm in the evening when she was swimming. Also, there should be some sort of alarm system so that when someone drowns, people respond. I understand there weren’t a lot of people there, and the people who were there would have gladly helped if they could have.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that every year, someone drowns when the lifeguards are off-duty?
Richard: Absolutely not. This is a totally preventable death. Even something as simple as a life ring could have saved our daughter. It’s obvious there’s a strong current there. It’s a highly dangerous spot.
Anna: I think the thing that’s disturbing is that it’s not a danger that you can see.
Richard: It was a warm, beautiful night, and was so inviting. I can totally understand why Jule was attracted to the area, and going out and swimming there. It’s not apparent, and there are no signs that explain how dangerous it is there.

Life without Jule
Anna: She was my future. I was looking forward to living the rest of my life with my daughter. I miss her happiness. She was like the sunshine in my life.
Richard: I’ll miss talking with her and having fun with her. There’s just a black hole in my heart that will never heal.

Purdys fisheries: A life working on the water

William Jeremiah Purdy founded Purdy’s fisheries in 1900 with two hoop nets and a dream. The dream is now an important part of Grand Bend and Sarnia’s history. The technology, however, has changed little; today, Purdy’s fishermen use trap nets, which are similar to hoop nets, with both trapping fish alive after they have entered a one-way gate. This is the account of one day on a boat with three members of current owner Milford Purdy’s crew.

Photos and story by Casey Lessard

The boat leaves the dock at Purdy’s in Sarnia at 7:30 a.m. Deckhand Chris Dewey, 21, overslept, but is able to catch the boat before captain Derek Jennings, 24, of Forest embarks. Before untying, Dewey helps gas up the boat with Dustin Johnston, a 29-year-old originally from Prince Edward Island, and Jennings checks the transmission on the Mary Jane, a boat that resembles a long flatbed pickup truck. We will be pulling fish out of trap nets, which are underwater cages made of rope, while fishermen on Purdy’s other boats will be using gill nets today. The crew of the Mary Jane unties and we head north into Lake Huron.
Pulling up to our first catch of the day, Jennings slows down as he struggles to see through the bright reflection of the early morning summer sun. As we navigate over the first of 12 nets we will be checking, Dewey hooks the buoys along the port side as Johnston hooks the rope at the starboard stern corner of the boat. Once hooked, Jennings reverses and halts the boat while the two deckhands pull the rope out of the water and above crates – some empty and some filled with ice – and to the middle of the boat.
In a feat of science that every boat operator must understand, but which is hard to explain to the layman, Jennings unties this rope, ties some of his own to one end while Johnston ties the other end to the starboard side of the boat, and Jennings gets the submerged net to rise. There are pulleys underwater, and the rope apparently goes down, but there must be an engine driving the process because when Jennings hits a lever, the boat shimmies and grinds (likely controlling the speed of the net’s ascension until the net rises to the surface.
After securing the net to the boat – the equipment looks much the same as you might expect from fishing boats of long ago, with wood the dominant element – the three men work together to pull the net up and see today’s catch. Not a lot, but I’m told in the spring the catch can be in the thousands of pounds, a multiple of the few pounds caught so far. Of course, the day is still young.
Among the catch, about ten silver bass, a dozen perch and about the same number of pickerel. Sheephead, redfin and all sport fish (other than the silver bass) are thrown overboard.⌦“If we get sturgeon, we’ll keep them,” Jennings says, but none today. “In the spring we’ll get tonnes.”
He points out that there are marks on their sorting tray that mark how long they want the fish to be. He and Dewey sort the fish that Johnston pulls in with a net on a pole. The men sort fast. The silver bass, perch and pickerel land with a piercing thud in empty blue trays on the boat’s floor. They quiver as they try to remain alive, and they will for a while.
Johnston shovels ice into the blue trays so the fish stay alive as long as possible so they are fresh when they arrive at market.
“Perch and pickerel are the two people like the best,” Jennings says. Perch is most popular, but “the pickerel we’ve been catching this year have been exceptional for some reason.”
On the third net, though, “I wrote zero on that one,” he says. “Not one fish.”
At 24, it may sound unusual for his coworkers to call Jennings master, but that’s the title Johnston says he was told to call his boat captain; he learned this at a recent commercial boat safety course. Jennings takes it in stride.
He is, of course, in charge today, and he shows his mastery of the boat and his job. He’s also patient, friendly and hard working, and treats his coworkers and guests with a relaxed kindness. It’s clear he’s comfortable with his work and is happy to be leading the charge.
One time, on the seventh net, he gets mildly frustrated when Johnston makes a mistake because he is distracted, talking about NASCAR. Instead of pulling a knot loop that unties the net, he pulls a single line that tightens it. Jennings tells him to move out and he bans him from talking NASCAR again.
“I do it (mess up the loop) once or twice a day,” Johnston replies, “even though I’ve been doing this for three years.”
Jennings asks Johnston to grab a needle and after a few minutes is able to untie the knot. They’re back in business.
A couple of nets later, captain Jennings throws a buoy line out while pulling the net in and it snags on the net.
“Way to go, NASCAR,” jokes Chris Dewey. Luckily, the captain doesn’t have to go in for a swim to unsnag the rope, which unsnags itself.

Now shirtless as the heat sinks in, Jennings’ physical condition is apparent. Johnston casually remarks that there are three perks to the job.
“Most people pay to tan, swim and get in shape,” he says. “I get paid to do all three. My friends don’t believe me, but I weigh 225.”

10th net
“We might not be able to get this one,” Jennings says after driving past the buoy.
Dewey runs with the hook, but stops and turns, shaking his head. Missed.
“Figured we would,” Jennings says. He turns the boat around, and the crew successfully hooks it.

Singing a song about loving someone for their money, Jennings tells the guys that he jokes with his girlfriend that he’s dating her for her money.
[Are you?] “No. She doesn’t have money, but her parents do.” Allison is still in Thunder Bay. “I don’t think she’ll let me do this another summer.” [What does your work think?] “They know it’s coming.”
By next summer, Jennings will be qualified to teach; his major is physics. He’ll still need to work next summer, but “there’s plenty of work in Thunder Bay.
“My girlfriend works for the health unit and it pays well. My money goes to school. She pays when we go out because she wants me to save for a ring. I will (buy one). Not now, but…”
Jennings teases that when he was in second-year university, two girls pulled him on stage at a bar, stripped him to his boxers, and oiled him up. The prize? He was named sexiest man on campus. But his heart is true to his girlfriend.
“I may flirt,” he says, “but I would never break her heart. She’s too good. She has a good heart.”
“Do you?” asks Johnston.
“Yeah, that’s why I’d never hurt her.”

It’s been a low catch day
Jennings sings Billy Joel’s Downeaster Alexa, emphasizing for his comrades the line, “There may be fish out there, but where, God only knows.”
The men prepare to release the net after counting their catch. Dewey sits on the ledge while Jennings brings the slack rope back in. The net’s rope comes aboard and is released from the slack. Dewey pulls this rope end over to Johnston’s side and the ropes are tied together again. Jennings gives some gas and slowly moves the boat as the deckhands hold the rope aloft to release the net.
On to the next one and once again, the winds make it hard to navigate the boat into a good position so Dewey can hook the net line.
“Try it at the back of the boat,” Jennings urges Dewey.
Success. Two more nets to haul before day’s end. It’s now 12:30.
The fish have been in the nets for up to a week.
“When were we last out?” Jennings asks. “Tuesday? The fish can survive for a while without eating. As long as they have room to swim around, minnows will come in.”
The fish enter the net after following a lead that’s about 600’-800’ long and funnels them into the cage, which is about 13’ by 20’.
“We have to come out here once a week,” Jennings notes, “even if it’s only to clean out the traps. We could keep them alive in there for a couple of weeks, but they longer they’re in there, the worse it is for them.”

What do you do outside of work? I ask deckhand Chris Dewey, whose grandfather worked on Purdy’s boats for 45 years.
“Not much,” he says. “Play sports any chance I get. I like hockey.”
Do you have a girlfriend? “No,” he replies.
A boyfriend? “No. Dustin’s my boyfriend,” he says, as the three men laugh.

“We always walk the last net off because it’s usually the one we get caught in.”
Getting the boat’s propeller caught in the net is a mess. If it happens, someone has to get in the water to release the boat from underneath. Easy if it’s out of gear, but if it’s in gear, it’s a tense situation.
“Today was a good day,” Jennings says. “I always figure if everyone comes home unscathed, it’s a good day.”

Back at the shop, operations manager Mike Hopko tells the men they can head home without running the fish through the processors that remove scales and fillet them. They are processed the next day, and by Wednesday, are delivered to Grand Bend for sale and cooking at Purdy’s at the Bend.
“No one has higher standards than Milford Purdy for quality, consistency and cleanliness,” says assistant manager Al Duffy. “Trust me. No one.
“What makes Purdy’s so unique is they control their product from catching it to cooking it.”

To try the fish (fresh or with chips) for yourself, visit Purdy’s on River Road. Fresh fish includes pickerel, perch, whitefish, and lake trout, as well as imported Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. The shop is open Wed. and Thurs. from 4 to 8 p.m., and Fri. to Sun. from 12 to 8 p.m. The season runs from Victoria Day to Labour Day.

Helping Grand Bend pass the test

Story and photo by Casey Lessard

Three years into the Clean Water Now project, Rotary club volunteers and the municipality of Lambton Shores continue to work to make Lake Huron water cleaner.
“We were concerned about pollution and the number of beach postings (due to high bacteria),” says Ron Hunt, chair of the Rotary clean water committee. “We thought, what can we do to ensure fewer postings? We also wanted a cleaner Grand Bend beach.”
The Rotary set aside $5,000 for each of five years, and the Community Health Foundation matched that figure. The municipality of Lambton Shores matched both, so the total figure is $20,000 per year designated for the project.
“We’ve given a lot of that back to Lambton Shores in a number of ways,” Hunt says, including a water measuring device off shore in front of the beachhouse. The equipment measures wave height, water turbidity, temperature, sunlight, and other conditions throughout the day. The information is transmitted to shore and directly to Lambton Shores offices.
Health unit staff and Rotary volunteers do the testing daily, and send water samples to be tested for E. coli. Results come back several days later, so they’re unreliable to make beach-posting decisions, but will be used to predict E. coli levels based on weather and wave conditions. Project funding also goes to the Ausable-Bayfield Conservation Authority to do testing at about 20 sites that feed into the lake.
“They’re still gathering this data,” Hunt says, “and hopefully we can have a model within the next year or so,” to allow decision makers to make the call on whether the water is safe. The information will also help determine why E. coli levels are high and where the bacteria is coming from.
“What will make it worthy,” says volunteer Stephanie Donaldson, “is when we can compile the statistics for the summer and look at three months of daily water testing. That’s when it will come to play. Some days you can look at it and it looks worse than it is.”
“Our objective is to make sure the Grand Bend beach is safe to swim, and keeping it that way. We’ve also been a big promoter of Blue Flag, and we were the ones who recommended the municipality apply for Blue Flag status. Meeting provincial standards 80 per cent of the time is one of the criteria. Last year we met that level, and we don’t know how it will go this year. We’re trying to do the testing and if something needs to be done, we’re going to do it.”

The Life Aquatic with Skip Izon

Skip Izon has been building boats since 1973; the first boat he built was a houseboat built while a student at the University of Western Ontario. He read every book and magazine he could get his hands on and took a three-year correspondence course in yacht design from Stamford, Connecticut. He’s been building boats since, and now specializes in high-end, top-quality canoes, kayaks and rowboats; their prices range from $5000 to $7500. Raised in Port Credit, his shop is located on Highway 21 north of Grand Bend.

As told to Casey Lessard

My name is Skipper. I come from a family of sailors. I had my own sailboat when I was four years old. I’ve always loved the water and boats. That’s what I do.
I worked at the Ceeps and The Spoke and Rim at Western and we’d heard about Grand Bend. We wanted to work in bars in the summer and be near the water, so we came up to the Bend. We were thinking of renting a cottage, but then I thought I could build a little houseboat. It would be cheaper and more fun. I drew it up. We built it in our driveway in a townhouse development, and we got in a bit of trouble there. They came down and laid down the law. I said we’d be gone in a week and it was. We brought it up and moved onto it. I lived in houseboats for about twenty summers and worked the bars.
There were usually about three or four of us living on the houseboat. It’s kind of halfway between camping and living in a cottage. We worked the bars and during the days I would do my boatbuilding and designing, learning that end of things.
After I started working at Sanders, there was a band called Busker, and for fun they used to get other musician friends of theirs and get on top of the houseboat and play Herb Alpert Tijuana music. I’m not a musician, so I drove the boat.
We’d go up and down the river and past the visiting boats. There were a lot of American boats; they just loved the brass music. We’d go by the yacht club and they’d think it was great. People would hand us cases of beer, and say “Just keep playing.” As long as the beer was flowing, the band would keep playing.
Then we would go out past the end of the pier. We’d shut the band down as we went along the pier and when we’d get around the end of the pier, they would play a song called The Lonely Bull. It begins with a long trumpet solo. We had a gentleman who was very good on the trumpet and he would do this trumpet solo and everybody on the beach would just stop. It was an odd looking boat to begin with, and you’ve got this band on. When the solo was finished the rest of the band would kick in.
We would go towards Oakwood and turn around and come back and just anchor in the shallows right in front of the beach. People would be dancing on the beach in the shallows and the band would just keep playing for the afternoon. You couldn’t get away with something like that these days.

My first kind of professional boat, and the most notable, is the Olympic rowing shells. This is old news that goes back to the early 80s. A gentleman by the name of Jackson Coughlan of Hudson Boat Works had taken lines, which is a visual description of a hull, off a German boat and Swiss boat, which at the time were the two fastest racing shells for doubles rowing in the world. I analyzed those lines. I worked back through the mathematics, and I could describe the performance of these two boats from the mathematics. The description I came up with was the same as what he had seen. Stability, initial stability, secondary stability, acceleration speed, tracking all these things; no turning in racing shells. What I saw in the mathematics agreed with what he saw in the water.
You can’t have everything, so you have to decide what’s most important. He came out with a set of criteria for a Canadian boat. I worked back through the mathematics and came up with a hull shape that fit that description and Jack built it. At first no one liked it; it was kind of tippy. People would try it, but it just hung in the boathouses because people would try it and people didn’t like it. Eventually a crew was stuck for a boat and they had to use this Hudson that nobody liked and they went out and they won. It was finicky, but it was fast. Since then it’s brought back three Olympic medals over the years. I think it’s been tweaked and modified since. The basic boat is my design, but I can’t really call it my design now because it has been modified. But the basic boat is in Beijing.
We’ll have dinner when Jack comes back and I’ll find out how the boat did. The Canadians use it and the Americans have a medal with it, too. I’m not sure what other countries use it.
Silken Laumann and her sister Daniele used it, as did Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle. Marnie and I worked at the Ceeps together before she started rowing. I was a waiter and she was a busgirl. She was a great girl; lots of fun to work with. She originally got into rowing as an exercise thing and just was taken with it and took it to the Olympics. She’s an amazing girl. She didn’t know that I designed her boat until years later when Discovery TV did a thing. It kind of came full circle.

I’ve got three new designs this year. One’s an 18’ traditional looking canoe; it’s a pretty canoe. It has Ojibwa ends. It’s a very well performing canoe. The part of the boat that’s in the water I’d put up against anything on the market right now for all the different performance things. It has stability, tracking, turning, acceleration, top speed. The first one was launched a couple weeks ago up in Muskoka.
The second boat is a rowing boat. It’s kind of an exercise/courting rowboat that you can take out by yourself for the exercise part of it. It’s 16’ long. It also has a passenger seat, so you can go out for a nice row along the shore with your mate and enjoy being on the water. I’m just finishing up the first one of those, and then it’s on its way to Cobourg.
The third one I call The Little Tripper. It’s a 12.5’ open kayak, like a little canoe, but you use a double-bladed kayak paddle. You’re out in the open, so you’re out in the sun. You’ve got access to all your stuff, same as a canoe, but it’s light and fast like a kayak. So I’m trying to get the best of both worlds. The first one is nearly finished and I just got an order for a second one even though the first one has never been in the water. They are all based on boats I’ve done before, so I don’t expect any problems.
I have to find a customer that will buy one of these boats before I even design it because I can’t afford to just do stuff on spec. I’ve been very lucky running into people at boat shows, and through word of mouth and past customers. I tell them what I want to do and they say, yeah, build me one. It’s a real show of faith on the customer’s part to buy an expensive little boat that’s never been in the water, but it’s happened over and over again. I’m very, very lucky that way.

I have a piece of property for sale in Grand Bend that will clear all debts and put me in a good financial footing. I’d like to take some molds off of some of my favourite designs and see if I can build a more inexpensive, semi-production boats that would be more available to more people not just those with lots of money. It’s a dream of mine to see more of my boats out there on the water and being used.
I always say that the boat I’m working on today is the culmination of everything I’ve done before. What I learned designing the Olympic rowing shells goes into the rowing boats, canoes and kayaks that I do today. They just keep getting better, faster and better performing. This little business is not driven by money. It’s driven by just trying to build the best boats possible.

Escapism is Bliss

Story by Casey Lessard

If you’re looking for an escape from reality, stop by Sarah Kane’s solo retrospective at Bliss Studio in Port Franks (7617 Riverside Drive, 519-243-3598), running August 11 to September 7. Twenty-five year old Kane, originally of London, sets up dreamscapes involving real people and transforms them through Photoshop before using graphite or acrylic to make art that bears her brand of escapism.
“It’s a literary term that’s been used a lot,” she says, “but it’s a form of art where you create a fantasy world to lose yourself in. When people come and see my show, because I create a theme for them to come and see, they enter a different world and it’s a new take on reality. The images aren’t so farfetched that you wouldn’t see it, but they’re a more beautiful and idealized version of what we see every day.”
Kane buys props and costumes to build her imaginary world, and often uses her younger sisters as models. Her art is beautiful and unsettling, and has matured into a solid enough body of work that at 25, she can have a retrospective show, a feat normally reserved for much more seasoned artists.
“I create a lot of art fairly fast. I do it full time, so I produce enough work to do two full out solo shows per year.”
Launching a full-time art career two years ago “was kind of a gamble because my boyfriend was in school,” Kane says, “so we took the chance and surprisingly I have been making money at it. I’m surprised at the response I’ve been getting. Everyone told me you can’t make it as a full-time freelance artist. I was uninspired by that and have never been interested in having a part-time job or in teaching, so I immersed myself in it. So far I’ve been able to make money off it to keep it going and it’s been rewarding so far.”
Bliss Studio is a sort of home for Kane, whose first group show was at the Port Franks studio.
“Usually we don’t do very many solo shows,” says owner Tony Miller. “But we’ve seen how hard Sarah’s been working and we thought it would be good for us and for her.”
“A lot of galleries are only interested in people that have already have been successful because they’re looking at the monetary factors. Who are they and can they sell? A lot of galleries are not willing to show up and coming artists, even if they think the art is visually appealing.”
Unlike many other galleries, Bliss enables young artists by charging a smaller percentage, and no hanging fee. It’s a bigger risk to take, but in the long run, Miller and Thomson think it’s worthwhile.
“No matter where she goes,” says owner Lorraine Thomson, “and I hope it’s to the top, I hope she see this as a home base.”

A Funny Thing happening at Playhouse

By Casey Lessard

Drayton Entertainment heads back to Roman times for its next musical comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, running August 13 to 30 at the Huron Country Playhouse.
“It’s high, high comedy with songs,” says director Rona Waddington. “The story is about a Roman slave who makes a deal with his master that if he can win for his master the heart of the woman that his master loves, then he’ll gain his freedom.”
Stratford veteran Steve Ross is the slave, while former Canadian Idol star Elena Juatco is the love interest. Theatre legend Doug Chamberlain is the slave master.
“It’s a very enjoyable play,” Waddington says. “It’s funny, upbeat and high-spirited.What’s interesting about this play, is that it’s very dependent on the audience, which plays much more of a role in the show.”
Sometimes, too big of a role.
“We had an audience member come in the other day, and I guess they knew the whole show somehow. They literally sang along with every song from the audience. That was a bit of a surprise for the cast. It was unusual. It was kind of funny, but it’s got to be unsettling for the audience around them.”
If you want to sing along or just enjoy it, tickets are available by calling 519-238-6000.

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