F & Q&A BY TIM SHUFF Cold Water Chronicles DAVID LEACH’S FATAL TIDE RECONSTRUCTS AN INFAMOUS KAYAKING ACCIDENT
DAVID LEACH, a journalist and writing professor in Victoria, B.C., has investigated two cold-water kayaking accidents: the death of Rene Arsenault at an adventure race on the Bay of Fundy in 2002, and the recent death of two athletes in Howe Sound, B.C. His non-fiction novel, Fatal Tide: When the Race of a Lifetime Goes Wrong, explores the Arsenault case.
How did you get hooked on this story? It was really a story that chose me. Another writer was going to do a 400-word write-up [for the magazine where I worked] but he couldn’t get anybody to talk. In my spare time I began making calls. As a writer you know anytime people aren’t talking there’s likely an interesting story. People eventually started coming forward and I spent about six and a half months trying to piece it together before I approached the family and [race participant] Boon Kek and they agreed to talk.
What made it book-worthy? After the magazine feature came out they an- nounced there would be an inquest. I attended the inquest because there were still a number of questions. I realized it wasn’t a black-and- white case of “oh, it’s absolutely the organiz- ers’ fault” or “absolutely it’s Rene Arsenault’s
fault.” Tere were so many shades of grey that I thought it illustrated interesting questions about risk and responsibility whenever we en- ter the outdoors.
Is there something about the mentality of adventure racing that makes it different from ordinary sea kayaking? Absolutely. Te sea kayaking community threw up their hands and said “don’t associate this with us” because it goes against that ethos of preparation, having the right communica- tion systems, and not going out in any kind of weather because you’ve got this fixed goal or destination. It’s that combination of a com- petitive environment and a wilderness envi- ronment, especially one with cold water, where things can go wrong so quickly.
You’re like the Jon Krakauer of kayaking. Were you inspired by Into the Wild? I’m a huge fan of Into the Wild. I teach it to students every year. What I really like about it is the ambivalence they often have to the main character. Tat’s what I set out to do with Fatal Tide. I don’t want to have my judgments get in the way of the reader’s reactions. I wanted to lay it out from as many perspectives as possible.
But Krakauer sympathized with his main character. Did you have an agenda? No. I was just trying to describe how complex a question it is.
What’s the take-home lesson? Te challenges and perils of cold-water im- mersion. Understanding the stages of cold shock, of muscle cooling, swimming failure, of hypothermia proper and then post-rescue collapse. Tat’s what really deepened the story for me when I realized that Rene Arsenault was likely alive right until the moment he was rescued and it was likely the way that he was rescued that was that final link in the chain that led to his death.
What should we know about hypothermia? How quickly swimming forces the blood back to the surface and sheds heat like 30 to 40 per cent faster and what a mistake that can be un- less you’re really, really close to shore. I think the urge to try and make it to shore ultimately did in the Howe Sound kayakers.
So don’t swim? Don’t swim.
www.adventurekayakmag.com 11
Q& A | P ROF I L E | HAP P ENINGS | VH F lotsam Jetsam
NEWS FROM THE PADDLING WORLD
PHOTO: BEN MOORE
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