In a case that made Canadian legal history, Ontario man convicted of impaired operation of a canoe
Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2019 1:35 pm
OSHAWA — It was late afternoon in April 2017 when police dispatch received a report of a drunk man stumbling around on a freeway ramp in Ontario’s cottage country.
Two Ontario Provincial Police constables were close by and responded within minutes. When they arrived, they found 37-year-old David Sillars soaking wet, shoeless and shivering in the cold April weather. He could barely form sentences due to hypothermia. But he eventually managed to get an urgent message to the officers: A young boy was still in the river.
This was the start of a chain of events that would make Canadian legal history. On Thursday, in a courtroom in Oshawa, Ont., Sillars became the first Canadian to be convicted of impaired driving charges for the act of paddling a canoe.
The case is so novel that it required a special ruling last fall on whether the Criminal Code’s vague language around “vessels” means a canoe counts under impaired driving laws. Justice Peter West pored over dictionary definitions, shipping regulations and other marine laws. He also looked at the House of Commons, where in the fall of 2017 — just six months after Sillars was charged — MPs rejected a justice department proposal to clarify that paddling is not impaired driving.
https://nationalpost.com/news/in-a-case ... of-a-canoe
Two Ontario Provincial Police constables were close by and responded within minutes. When they arrived, they found 37-year-old David Sillars soaking wet, shoeless and shivering in the cold April weather. He could barely form sentences due to hypothermia. But he eventually managed to get an urgent message to the officers: A young boy was still in the river.
This was the start of a chain of events that would make Canadian legal history. On Thursday, in a courtroom in Oshawa, Ont., Sillars became the first Canadian to be convicted of impaired driving charges for the act of paddling a canoe.
The case is so novel that it required a special ruling last fall on whether the Criminal Code’s vague language around “vessels” means a canoe counts under impaired driving laws. Justice Peter West pored over dictionary definitions, shipping regulations and other marine laws. He also looked at the House of Commons, where in the fall of 2017 — just six months after Sillars was charged — MPs rejected a justice department proposal to clarify that paddling is not impaired driving.
https://nationalpost.com/news/in-a-case ... of-a-canoe