School children are regularly warned to keep off the ice on streams and rivers. It was no different in 1953. Despite repeated warnings from their teachers and parents that the ice on the Grand River at Elora was particularly dangerous during a thaw late in February that year, three children attempted to cross it on their way to school. The ice cracked, plunging them into the icy water.
The children were Jacqueline and Leon Tomkins, 7-year-old twins, and sister Lois, aged 9. On the morning of Feb. 27, a Friday, they believed they were late for school, and risked the dangerous shortcut across the river to avoid getting into trouble with their teachers at the old Elora Public School.
The wet and terrified children immediately began shouting and crying. Several people heard them immediately, including Walter Kreps, who was working at his concrete burial vault business on the north shore of the river and on the south side of Mill Street. Soon a neighbour, Mike Vince, who operated a machine shop a short distance to the west, was also on the scene.
Kreps and Vince were afraid to set foot on the ice, fearing that they might make the situation worse. Vince came up with the idea of pushing a ladder to the children, but he was unable to get close enough. All the while, he and Kreps shouted encouragement to the children, urging them to keep their grip on the edge of the broken ice, and assuring them that they would be rescued in a few minutes.
All the commotion attracted a crowd of spectators. Not surprisingly, most of them had suggestions about how to conduct the rescue. A short distance downstream, workers in the employ of MacLellan Construction of Mount Forest were busy rivetting the superstructure of the new bridge at the foot of Metcalfe Street.
Two of them, Ross Shaw, of Farewell, and Stan Smydo, of Mount Forest, could see that three children had fallen through the ice. The workers were still in their late teens. The young men reacted at once, dropping their tools and scurrying upstream on the south side of the river, taking a length of rope with them.
Following very cautiously on the path the children had taken across the ice, they approached the youngsters. By then, two other workmen, George Armstrong, of Palmerston, and Wilf Payer, of Elora, followed behind.
Shaw and Smydo worked quickly but cautiously, fearing that more of the ice might give way at any second. They plucked the shaking and shivering children out of the water, and soon had them back on solid ground.
Meanwhile, on the north shore, Kreps and Vince were still scratching their heads, trying to figure a way to rescue the children without making the situation worse. A bystander on the bank thought additional help was needed, and called the fire department. The rescue was over by the time it arrived.
In a few moments, the children were on their way to Groves Hospital in Fergus, where the nurses checked them for injuries and treated them for shock and exposure to the icy water. They were fine after their frightening ordeal, and soon were back home.
Wet and freezing themselves, Shaw and Smydo retreated to the construction company’s shack, where they found some dry clothes. As they were buttoning up their new duds, Elora’s constable, George Rankin, appeared with a bottle.
Though he knew that the young men were underage, he offered them a stiff drink to help warm their insides. A few minutes later they were back at work, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the community, and particularly the tearful parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Tomkins, considered them heroes.
Daily papers in Guelph and Kitchener carried the story the next day. By Monday, there were accounts in many Ontario papers, and that week, every weekly in the area had a few paragraphs on the rescue. Elora council met informally, and submitted a recommendation for an award for Shaw and Smydo.
The Tomkins children should have been wary about venturing on the ice at all. An incident in Fergus 18 days earlier was similar, and it, too, received wide publicity, with subsequent warnings to children.
On the morning of Feb. 7 Mrs. Vaughan Douglas had a handful with her two youngest sons, John and James, aged 4 and 3. They began by throwing sticks at passing cars on St. Andrew Street, in front of Fred Henemader’s plumbing shop. He was their grandfather. She dragged the boys inside and admonished them. A few minutes later she went out to run some errands, but the youngsters were nowhere in sight. She followed their footsteps to the river, and immediately spotted the boys, in the freezing waters of the Grand, grasping and grabbing onto the edge of the ice. Every time they managed to get a grip, the ice broke off.
She shouted for help and then plunged into the water herself, but the river fell away quickly from the shore and she could not get close to the boys.
Nichol farmer Ivan Coffey was in Fergus on business, and heard the shouts. He rushed to the spot, a short distance upstream from the St. David Street bridge, and urged Mrs Douglas to get out of the water. He then went in himself, and managed to retrieve one of the boys. The effort, with the frigid water, exhausted him.
By then, Fred Henemader was at the river bank. He had called the Fergus fire brigade before going down. He plunged into the water, but was unable to reach the other boy.
All the commotion and shouting quickly attracted a crowd of neighbours and passers-by, among them Warden Howes, of the Howes & Reeves garage across St. Andrew Street. A husky man and a air force war veteran, he cooly evaluated the situation. He waded into the water himself, asking Henemader to grip the back of his coat so that he would not become a victim himself.
Howes spotted the end of the boy’s scarf in the water. He grabbed at it, and managed to pull the youngster into his arms. In seconds, both boys were on the shore, and unconscious from the effects of cold and shock.
When the firemen arrived the excitement was over. Members of the brigade attended to the boys, bringing them back to consciousness, and taking them to the hospital a short distance away for observation.
Warden Howes and Ivan Coffey, once they got warmed up, suffered no consequences from their icy plunge. Their quick actions no doubt saved the boys. The Fergus community regarded them as heroes, and accounts of their rescue efforts appeared in papers across Ontario.
Weather conditions in January and February made the ice in the Grand River thin and precarious, unlike most years when the ice remained solid, usually into the first week of March, if not later. The two near-tragedies that year were lessons that the Grand could be a dangerous playground for children.
Fred Henemader considered the rescue of his grandsons a miracle. Parents stressed that fact to their children that winter, and recalled the incident in years afterward. Fortunately there were no further incidents that year or in the years that followed.