Interview with Loreena McKennitt
(please click on any of these questions to read responses,
if scrolling you will find the complete interview below)

1. When your fiancé, Ronald Rees, perished, you began work on setting up The Cook- Rees Fund very soon afterward. Was it difficult to think of helping other people so soon after this tragedy?

2. Who contributed money to the fund?

3. Prior to this accident, would you say you were aware of water safety?

4. What did you learn about water safety issues, or water search and recovery issues, after this incident?

5. When did you have the idea to make "Live In Paris And Toronto" a money-raising release for the fund?

6. Who advised or inspired you when you were setting up the fund?

7. Are there a large number of water-related fatalities in Canada?

8. Are Canadians fully aware of water-safety issues? Where are the knowledge gaps?

9. Do most water accidents involve alcohol or drug use or both, or are they simply "accidents"?

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1. When your fiancé, Ronald Rees, perished, you began work on setting up The Cook- Rees Fund very soon afterward. Was it difficult to think of helping other people so soon after this tragedy?

I think every person is different in how they respond to such situations, and also in terms of what vehicles may be open to them to make their response. In my case, I felt such a welling-up of emotion and energy that I felt challenged to create a vehicle for that energy. I suppose I am the sort of person who believes that if you are walking along in the dark and you stumble into a pothole, you want to make sure that the pothole is filled so the next person to come along doesn't stumble.

And of course, when you look at the water safety issue, it's clear that there is still a long way to go in terms of education, and in terms of the basics needed for search and recovery operations. For the friends and family of those involved in this particular incident, we saw clearly that more resources and funding could and should be put toward those activities.

And finally, the fact that we had a memorial service for the three men who perished meant that we were looking for a place where people could send their donations, and this sort of fund seemed like an obvious thing to create for that purpose. I think the fact that I had already started and established my own business some years ago gave me the confidence to set something up of this scale.

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2. Who contributed money to the fund?

Initially, most contributions came from people from the Stratford community who were friends and family of the Cook and Rees families as well as my own contacts and their families, and my friends and family and work colleagues. Since then, about $3 million CDN has also come in from funds raised by the sale of the double CD "Live In Paris And Toronto". Donations also came in from a memorial service held after the untimely and tragic death of Greg Cook's aunt, who was an OPP police officer who died in an accident in the line of duty.

In the years since the Fund was established, we have also received a number of in memoriam donations from the friends and family of people who have perished in other water-related incidents. We are pleased and grateful that so many donors have chosen to offer a memorial to their loved ones by assisting the Fund in its work.

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3. Prior to this accident, would you say you were aware of water safety?

I took my Bronze medallion in lifesaving swimming courses as a young adult, but that was all the training I had. And my lifestyle has just not led me into water-related sports and activities on the whole, besides swimming. So I would have to say that I was relatively unaware.

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4. What did you learn about water safety issues, or water search and recovery issues, after this incident?

I would say that after studying it a bit further over the last couple of years, my perception is that the risks involved in a lot of water-related activities are greater than what the public perceives them to be. And that quite frequently, as in many areas of our lives, we look to the government to dissect and analyse what is risky behaviour and what is not.

To some degree, I do share the view of those who feel they do not want the government interfering unduly in their lives, but I do see the merits in seat belts, for example, and the the benefits of legislation to compel people to use them. In my view, the government has been lagging behind in setting benchmarks for the public in the water safety field. In Canada, for example, only now are they taking the initiative to bring in new regulations which they will, I hope, continue to refine and expand. So that's the good news.

At the time of the incident my friends and fiancé were involved in, I would say that I saw that funding for search and recovery teams could have been better. Overall, I would imagine the answer to that question varies from location to location. Living in the province of Ontario in the country of Canada, it seems to me that the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) are probably one of the better-outfitted dive units certainly in this country, and even they are underfunded. In terms of what equipment there is out there for these units, relative to what certain other pieces of equipment would mean in terms of their success, more funding could help them have a better success rate, success being measured by an exercise being conducted where they have found what they are looking for and it has been a safe exercise for the divers and that it has been cost-efficient and time efficient. With certain newer pieces of equipment, you can shorten the search time considerably, and the equipment can often go to places where it would be very dangerous or impossible for divers to go.

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5. When did you have the idea to make "Live In Paris And Toronto" a money-raising release for the fund?

This plan came shortly after the incident. I was quickly becoming aware that recovery exercises such as this one could be quite involved and costly. It became clear to me that if the fund was restricted to the initial amount of donations received, the fund would only be able to address a very small area of need, for all that the donations we received to begin with were very generous and very gratefully received. So I felt that it was important to try to find a money-generating engine on a slightly larger scale. Many other funds or charitable enterprises have fund-raising exercises, processes that go on and people who are hired on to work for these charities on a full-time basis to administrate and to raise money. I didn't want to make the commitment at that time to expand the infrastructure to that degree, but as I already had this recording in the works, it was very easy to use it as a money-generating engine.

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6. Who advised or inspired you when you were setting up the fund?

When setting up the fund, I worked with my regular close team of business advisors inside and close to the Quinlan Road ranks. As far as inspirations are concerned, I'd have to say that Mothers Against Drunk Driving was a model; a very effective organisation which started out of a specific incident and began from nothing. I don't know if this memorial fund will ever grow to be as big and have as great an impact as it has, but I really admire what MADD has done. Equally I would point to the SmartRisk foundation in Toronto headed by Dr. Robert Conn. There are people within the search and rescue dept. here in Canada who have been a great inspiration; Scott Russell from the National Secretariat For Search And Rescue, for example, as well as Peter Garapick and his colleagues from the Coast Guard and the staff at the Lifesaving Society as well.

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7. Are there a large number of water-related fatalities in Canada?

According to current statistics as they are now collected, there are well over 500 water-related fatalities in Canada annually.

What one doesn't know is all the other kinds of incidents or close calls or injuries, from near-drownings to people diving into a half-filled swimming pool and being injured that way. With that in mind, one of the initiatives in which the fund has been participating recently is something called WIRA (the Water Incident Research Alliance) which will address this need: a central database which takes reports from first responders and goes on to really assess and measure not just the fatalities but all the other human costs to do with water-related incidents.

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8. Are Canadians fully aware of water-safety issues? Where are the knowledge gaps?

I don't think Canadians are fully aware. As we all know, Canada has a very large amount of water all around it, as well as having the Great Lakes and a lot of large and small lakes within it. Consequently, there are a lot of water-related activities that are conducted in and around this country. My impression, based on the feedback from various media-related exercises that I've been involved in, is that a good proportion of the public wants to know more. They want to know where the risks are, and they want to know how to properly protect themselves.

What's lacking, clearly, is a standardisation of accreditation for courses having to do with a lot of water-related activities. The new regulations that have come into place recently for boating courses are beginning to address that issue, and are trying to establish a standard across the board where course providers for boating activities are accredited. But right now, there are so many course providers just in the boating field, and anybody can hang their shingle out and say they can teach you how to sail. But there's no proof that they are fully equipped to teach you about the water safety issues involved. I'm sure we would all like to feel that the government, or some not-for-profit organisation such as the Lifesaving Society, could accredit such schools just as has been done with swimming lessons, and make sure that a certain standard is upheld across the board.

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9. Do most water accidents involve alcohol or drug use or both, or are they simply "accidents"?

I think that using the word "accidents" is one of the great fallacies in this area. That's why I think Dr. Robert Conn of SmartRisk is doing such important work in trying to change the terminology we use. We really need to stop calling many of these incidents accidents. Because "accident" implies it's a situation where you just shrug your shoulders and throw your hands up in the air and say, well, there's not much you could have done about that. I think that part of the battle to reduce the risks in water-related activities begins with the terminology. It's important to realise, first of all, that there are risks involved in everything that we do, and we're not about to lock ourselves in the house for fear of them. SmartRisk is about assessing the risks inherent in all activities and then taking the appropriate training and the appropriate measures to protect yourself. I call it laying down your fallback arrangements. You can take your training, your sailing course for example, but also you can tell people where you're going and when you'll be back. When search and rescue people look at an incident, they ask, was it a failure of technology, was it human error, or was it bad weather? Pretty much every incident can be boiled down to one of those, or a combination. So if you look to pro-active initiatives, you can prevent a lot of incidents from happening. You can't prevent everything from happening, but that's why then you have your lifejacket on. That's why people know when you went out and when you are expected to be back.