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Alcohol and water don't mix

Weighing all of this, Justice West concluded that yes, canoes count — and so does pretty much anything else that transports you over water. In the eyes of the law, then, being drunk while paddling an inflatable dinghy is the same thing as being drunk while driving a pickup truck. Smoking a joint and paddling a canoe is equal to smoking a joint and driving a car. All of the same penalties, including mandatory minimum sentences, apply. Yet you cannot be charged for impaired operation of a bike, because the Criminal Code says land vehicles must be motorized to count.

But all of this was still far off in the future on that April afternoon in 2017, when Sillars was sitting in a police cruiser trying to warm up and explain what happened.

Sillars had been hanging out and drinking at a friend’s cottage when he decided to go canoeing on the Muskoka River with his girlfriend’s son, eight-year-old Thomas Rancourt. They paddled toward a floating yellow barrier that warned boaters about a dam and the High Falls waterfall that dropped 50 feet onto rocks.

They were at the barrier, possibly trying to dislodge some junk pressed up against it, when the canoe tipped. The river was swollen with snowmelt and the current was very strong. When he hit the water, Sillars struggled to get to shore and had to kick off his heavy boots. But Thomas was carried away downriver, toward the falls.

Photo by Facebook / Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

The police quickly called for backup to search the area. At 5:46 p.m., just 20 minutes after Sillars was found, officers pulled Thomas’s lifeless body from the frigid water at the bottom of High Falls. He’d been wearing four layers: a T-shirt, a hoodie, a winter jacket and a lifejacket meant for a child 30 pounds lighter. Once the canoe tipped and his thick clothing soaked up water in the rushing river, Thomas almost certainly never had a chance.