By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The opening of the Osoyoos Safe Boating Station in the fall of 2024 was celebrated for the months of hard work and community spirit that brought to fruition the goal of improving water safety on Osoyoos Lake. But barely a year later, the sight of the station stripped of most of its life jackets reduced a key architect of the station to tears.
It was just after the Labour Day weekend last September when Larry Stone from the Osoyoos Rotary Club – the main driver of the project – drove up to the kiosk to clean up and was stunned to see all of the new life jackets were missing. Twenty-four life jackets in total, all gone. Older, well-used ones were left hanging on their hooks.
“I gotta be honest, I pulled up there, and I saw they were all gone, and I sat in my car, and I cried, because I put my heart and soul into that project.” For someone to steal 24 brand new life jackets, “that was just appalling,” he adds.
The Safe Boating Station is outfitted with various sizes of life jackets, information on local hazards and safe boating information as well as the story of Sam and the work of Gene and Sandy Ralston. Sherani Theophilus photo.
With the leftover budget, Rotary has put in $600 to purchase 12 more, which Osoyoos Home Hardware is providing at cost.
“There were about 16 or 18 down there when I got down there, and there are about four that are in great shape, so we’re going to put those ones back.” The remaining older ones will be removed, Stone said, and with the additional 12 new jackets, they will have 16. Not ideal he says, but until they have the budget, this will have to do.
Stone notes that they have learned their lesson, as the life jackets that were stolen had no identifying marks on them. This time around the new jackets will have “Rotary Osoyoos” writ large with indelible markers.
“At least this way if anybody wants to steal them, they’re going to have a hard time explaining why they’ve got a jacket from the Rotary Club of Osoyoos,” Stone says with a note of defiance.
The Rotary Board has given the green light for the purchase of the 12 jackets, Home Hardware has ordered them and they should be in the Safe Boating Station ahead of the July 1 long weekend.
The Safe Boating Station, located at the Osoyoos Boat Launch and Marina 8215 Spartan Drive features free lifejackets for loan along with general safety information and specific information about local hazards, was the brainchild of RCMP Sgt. Jason Bayda.
Dismayed at the preventable drownings that have amounted to one or two a year for over a decade, Bayda was spurred into action over the tragic death of Sam Pirzadeh in 2015 after he lent his lifejacket to a passenger on his seadoo who did not have a lifejacket, only to lose his life after the personal watercraft they were both on capsized.
“He wanted to make sure she was safe. She survived. He did not,” Bayda said at the opening of the station in 2024.
