Ontario Provincial Police Constable Jamie Brockley and OPP summer intern Braedon Lafreniere stop boaters to check for safety equipment and boating liscenses, on Pigeon Lake near Bobcaygeon Ontario July 7, 2010.Fred Thornhill for The Globe and Mail
If there's a care in the world, you won't find it in the cool, black waters off Boyd Island, where four middle-aged women float behind a pair of houseboats.
On a searing-hot midweek afternoon, the weightiest issues are what's for dinner and where's the sunscreen, while worldly concerns - the adequacy of Canada's recreational boating laws, for example - remain blissfully off the radar.
It's not that Caren Adno and Jill Block, captains of the two floating cottages, dismiss the perils of pleasure cruising; quite the contrary. Having spent a dozen-plus summers on Ontario's busiest waters, they know the rules and they follow them, and are rarely mystified when things go wrong for others.
"They are always people who don't wear life jackets, and they drink," Ms. Adno said, her arms draped over a pool noodle in Pigeon Lake. "When things happen, it's people being stupid, or just not thinking, or being lazy."
Blunt as that assessment might sound, Ontario Provincial Police statistics support it.
Of 10 people who have died while boating this year, nine - including an off-duty OPP officer - didn't wear life jackets and drowned after falling into the water. The 10th wore a life jacket but died of exposure to cold water while being towed ashore.
Boating safety surged to the top of the national consciousness this week after a speedboat lodged itself inside a houseboat on Shuswap Lake in British Columbia on the weekend, killing the houseboat captain and injuring eight others. Police are still investigating, but cited speed, alcohol and a lack of running lights as possible causes.
In the meantime, concerns have arisen around the Pleasure Craft Operator Card, which all boaters in Canada must carry. While often referred to as a licence, it is far less stringent than that. Bearers take a basic written test to get the card, which never expires and is not subject to suspension.
Calls for a genuine boater licensing regime, similar to that for drivers, may have grown louder since the Shuswap tragedy, but some wonder whether it would be realistic or effective.
"Federally managing a pleasure craft licence for different types of craft would be a significant challenge," said Sergeant Karen Harrington, co-ordinator of the OPP's marine program. "Who's going to maintain it? What's the testing standard going to be?"
Sgt. Harrington also wonders whether a more stringent licence would reduce marine deaths in Ontario, where drinking laws for boaters are already as strict as they are for drivers, and where nearly all fatalities are preventable drownings from small boats, not collisions involving large ones.
"I think the biggest impact would be getting people in smaller craft to wear life jackets and not drink the alcohol," she said, adding that the OPP would support mandatory life-jacket use.
A few kilometres south of Ms. Adno's idyllic mooring spot, the rental berths are empty and the cicadas are singing at Happy Days Houseboats, further signs that another hot boating season is under way.
If the requirements seem relaxed for pleasure craft owners, they're even less strict for those who rent boats, including the big, unwieldy houseboats that ply the locks along the popular Trent-Severn Waterway. Federal law allows renters to skip the operator's card and simply sign off on a checklist of safety basics.
Still, companies like Happy Days apply extra conditions - boats must be moored to land at night, for instance - and they train customers on the boat before letting them cast off. All are warned that the OPP could appear out of nowhere at any time, ready to check safety equipment and sniff out open booze on board, which Ontario forbids unless a boat is parked for an extended time and equipped with a toilet and cooking facilities.
"The very nature of being watched changes what you do," Happy Days co-owner Jill Quast said, taking shelter from the sun under an umbrella outside her lakefront office. "But there's only so much safety you can put in place, and then you have the human factor."
Stiffer laws, in other words, go only so far in the absence of stiffened resolve to obey them.
For her part, Ms. Adno can enjoy her vacation free of any need to brush up. Her family has been stopped many times by the OPP, but has never had a problem.
"There's enough rules," she said, bobbing gently in the black water. "If you follow them, you should be fine."