A Tragedy Subverted

How do you follow a story like that?—so tragic and so sweet. And it’s not like this is the first time I’ve been stuck. Nancy once wrote of a snowmobile accident, which I decided to follow up with a similar winter tragedy on Grenadier Pond. Toronto’s mythology practically begins with the tale of the soldiers who fell through its ice on their way to defend Fort York, and searching the Toronto Star archives, I’d found my own tragic tale of two boys who’d told their friends they were skipping school to go skating, and who had never come home.

Wanting to give it a twist, though, I took on the voice of the kid who had snitched to their principal, and so made it into such a jaunty thing that I actually felt some shame for what I had done. What if these two boys missing had actually died? What if they’d never even found the bodies? I felt the boys’ joy as it turned into fear. I felt the anxiety of their families, waiting to hear from the authorities, waiting for someone downtown to find them, or the even longer wait until spring when the pond ice cleared.

Inspired by La Petite Princesse. Image based on this one by Dawn Hudson.