Whitby man drowned in Kawartha Highlands Park

A Whitby man drowned in a Kawartha Lakes park last week, prompting a warning from first responders.

The man, 81, and his friend were floating in innertubes in the water in Kawartha Highlands Signature Site around 2 p.m. on Aug. 2. He suddenly disappeared from his tube.

The OPP and local Fire and EMS services soon responded. Witnesses told them the pair were floating down the river. The missing man got out of his tube in about chest-high water without a life jacket.

The second man got out closer to shore and when he turned noticed his friend had vanished. He found the tube but found no sign of the first man. Witnesses call Parks Wardens who later found the man floating facedown in the water.

“With capsized vessels and falling overboard the top contributing factors in boating deaths every year, a significant number of lives stand to be saved if boaters, personal watercraft users and paddlers wore a lifejacket or personal floatation device,” the OPP wrote.

Durham Police put out a similar warning today after rescuing five people from a capsized boat in Lake Simcoe near Beaverton.

Kawartha Highlands Park sits about 150 kilometres northeast of Whitby just outside of Buckhorn. At roughly 375 square kilometres, it’s the second-largest national park in Ontario after Algonquin. It includes extensive waterways and the majority of the Kawartha Lakes.