The water in Lake of Two Mountains on Montreal’s north shore was choppy Wednesday. It just might have been July 13, 1954, the day 12 kids went out on a boat. One of them was Paula Millington, 6, Gail Millington Grant’s sister.
“The NCC, which is the Negro Community Centre had a camp and they went on a day picnic,” explained Millington Grant from her dining room while looking at images of her sibling.
A bus-load of them went to Île-Bizard for the day and someone offered the kids a boat ride. But tragedy struck. The boat loaded with 17 children capsized and 12 of them — four boys and eight girls — including Paula, perished. Millington Grant was just two years old.
“I don’t remember her,” she said, her voice trembling. “I have a picture of her holding me.”
The accident is one of the city’s worst maritime tragedies. Sixty-nine years later there’s still no public commemoration or marker, something which bothers many in the Black communities.
The drowning is also causing Allison Saunders to reflect. Two of her mom’s cousins, Diane and Edwin Springer, were also victims.
“I know my mom was there, know that my mom wanted to go on the boat, her mother had said ‘no,’ so she was spared,” Saunders told Global News. “Twelve kids. Like, that’s a lot of kids and it impacted a lot of people.”
What’s worse, she pointed out, hardly anyone talked about it because back then they had no support. But they’re trying to change that now because, according to her, it’s affecting the younger generation.
Her mom had deep feelings about it.
“She grew up with them and she was a mom, and she passed them on to me and then I had my kid feelings and I grew up and passed them on to my kids,” Saunders noted.
One way Millington Grant is channeling her pain is spreading one simple message –teach kids how to swim.
“I don’t understand. We teach basketball, we teach football, we teach soccer, all these other sports but we don’t teach them how to swim and it’s mandatory in the school system,” she observed.
She hopes that message will be driven home on Sunday at a ceremony at Union United Church to commemorate the tragedy.