MANDEL: Was drowning of young boy a tragic accident or foreseeable risk taken by allegedly impaired canoeist?

OSHAWA – That poor little boy.

Eight-year-old Thomas Rancourt really wanted to go canoeing after school with David Sillars — his mom’s boyfriend and a man who looked upon as a “father figure.”

But April 7, 2017 was hardly a good day to be out on the swollen and frigid Muskoka River.

The weather had been bad enough that school buses had been cancelled in Bracebridge and there were high water warnings due to the spring snow melt.

Sillars, 37 at the time, was at his friend’s cottage on the river where he’d drank two coolers and smoked marijuana.

Toxicology readings would later peg his blood alcohol level at between 90 and 160/mg of alcohol in 100 m/blood — up to double the legal limit.

His THC reading indicated “recent” marijuana use.

Two friends told the Etobicoke man it wasn’t a good day for a paddle, but Sillars went anyway — and took the child along for the ride.

Thomas would drown after their canoe flipped in the hypothermic water and was swept over the 50-ft. high falls.

Was it a tragic accident, as Sillars’ lawyer William Thompson argued at the close of his trial Thursday?

Or was Thomas’s death caused by an impaired boater who made the criminally-negligent decision to take the boy out on an obviously dangerous river, as Crown attorney Frank Giordano insisted before Ontario Court Justice Peter West.

Sillars has pleaded not guilty to impaired operation of a vessel causing death; operating a vessel with over 80 mg alcohol/100ml blood causing death; dangerous operation of a vessel causing death and criminal negligence causing death at the judge-alone trial.

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The unique trial has already set a precedent, with the judge ruling in November that a canoe is a “vessel” under the Criminal Code.

Sillars’ lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that a non-motorized boat isn’t subject to the country’s impaired driving laws.

In his closing address, Thompson maintained the river was “not obviously dangerous” that day and Sillars was an experienced and capable paddler who showed no signs of impairment.

If anything, he seemed to blame Thomas for what happened — suggesting the child leaned over and caused the canoe to tip, an accusation that brought hisses of “disgusting” and “he was just 8” from members of the boy’s family in the courtroom.

“There is no evidence Mr. Sillars did anything wrong to cause the canoe to capsize,” the lawyer said.

The prosecutor insisted that what Sillars did wrong was take a child — dressed in a lifejacket that was too small over three layers of winter clothing — canoeing on a fast-moving, freezing cold river with a strong current that pulled them towards a 50 ft. plunge.

“It’s not like these waterfalls just showed up,” Giordano said, “yet he persisted needlessly with what I suggest was an obvious result.”

Sillars told friends he and Thomas had paddled to the yellow buoy line retrieve a blue barrel.

He said Thomas had leaned over, the canoe capsized and they both landed in the water.

“Thomas was yelling for help but he couldn’t help him and he just saw him getting taken further down the stream,” Const. Kyle Maki said Sillars had told him after being treated for hypothermia at the hospital.

“It was stupid, it was stupid,” he said of taking Thomas out.

He told another officer: “I should know better. I thought to swim after him but he had a lifejacket so I went to call 911. Oh, f–k, it’s all my fault.”

These statements show Sillars acknowledging responsibility, Giordano insisted.

“But for his actions, that child lives.”

It seems he knew that as well.

“I feel so guilty,” Sillars had texted a friend from the hospital. “Warn everyone I’m not safe to be around and now a young boy is gone.”

Justice West has reserved his judgment.

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