My name is Luke and I’m from Waterloo. The name of the waterbody that’s influenced me is St Lawrence River/Lake Ontario.

So I’ve had a cottage there for my whole life, so I've done a lot of boating and those kinds of things so I have some sense around the water, common sense. Then I had some friends to my cottage about 4 years ago, and we had a tin boat and it had a little hole in it. Thought it was just a little hole, it wouldn’t be too big of an issue, could just bail it out if it started to leak a little bit, but we also had a motor that had fallen in the river the year before so it wasn’t really working all that well. But you know, you’re just looking to have some fun so we drove out in the boat and we were pretty far out then the motor cut out and one of my friends was wearing leather shoes, patent leather shoes, so he was standing on the seat the whole time. Then our other friend who is kind of a timid guy he called our cottage to inform them of what was happening and he just sort of said, really kind of indeterminately.
“I think that the word kind of in dire straits out here.”

My dad was on the other end and we could hear him through the phone just responding by saying, “Ahhhhh, he said dire, they’re in dire straits!”

So the conversation ended there without any real communication taken, so then somebody else called back and informed them of what was happening, more particular aspects of the situation. So then a guy who just told his story two times ago who makes wooden boats, and he was working on a boat museum at the time and he was at our cottage with his boat. And he came out and towed us. Then when we got back, he took me aside and said really seriously, and we had known each other, not really well, but you know casually, and he just said really seriously, "You know Luke, at the museum we do a lot of boat safety courses."