MONTREAL — A Quebec Coroner is recommending better signage and more advanced means of communication between snowmobilers after five French tourists and their Quebec tour guide drowned when they fell through holes in the ice in 2020.
In a summary of her recommendations published Friday, coroner Jessica Tremblay said the men could have warned each other of the dangerous ice if they had GPS and other technology to communicate amongst themselves.
As it was, the group of eight tourists and their tour guide, an experienced snowmobile tour guide working for a licensed tour operator, could only see the others’ snowmobile tail lights to keep track of their group as they crossed a part of Lac Saint-Jean in the Saguenay on the night of Jan. 21, 2020,
Tour guide Benoit Lespérance decided to take the group on a shortcut on the ice to get to their destination for the night in Saint-Gedeon.
The coroner noted that the signage at the shore line does not indicate that strong water currents make some of the ice there unstable. She said better signage and more awareness could make a big difference for the safety of future snowmobile tours.
When the first group of five tourists fell through the ice the guide who was ahead of them did not see them until he noticed in his rear view mirror that he could no longer see their lights. He immediately made a u-turn to find them.
In the meantime, another snowmobiler who was in seventh place in the line fell through the ice as well. The coroner recommends that better communication technology could have enabled the men to warn each other instantly about the dangers.
In the chaos that followed, another tourist fell in as he tried to pull his friends out. The three that remained were told by the guide to remain at their spot on the ice while he tried to find the missing men.
When he didn’t return, the men made their way on to dry land, but eventually they discovered their tour guide had also perished while trying to save the tourists.
The cause of death for snowmobile tourists Gilles Claude, Julien Benoit, Yann Thiery, Arnaud Antoine and Jean-René Dumoulin, as well as for their tour guide Benoit Lespérance, was drowning.
