TORONTO, Canada (9 August 2004) -- A Toronto woman is dead after a scuba diving accident late Saturday afternoon at Big Bay Point on Lake Simcoe. According to police, Aviva Barth was training with a scuba diving school about 30 metres off the end of the government dock at the north end of a small side road near the point in Innisfil. At about 5:45 p.m., a boat passed between the end of the dock and the dive marker, which lets boaters know that scuba divers are swimming beneath them. Barth, 30, was hit by the boat and suffered a serious head injury. Her fellow divers rushed to her, brought her to the surface and tried to resuscitate her. She later died of her injuries in Barrie's Royal Victoria Hospital. Police said yesterday that they suspected the operator of the boat did not notice what had happened and did not stop. They did not release the name of the diving school where Barth was training. Barth was the co-founder of a company named HavinganAffair.ca, an Internet service that helps people who are planning a social event to connect with product suppliers. Barth was a York University business graduate who earned her masters at McMaster University in Hamilton. | | Her family could not be reached last night. Mike Briggs, president of the Ontario Underwater Council — a diving advocacy group — said yesterday that most Ontario boaters are taught to recognize a dive flag during their boating lessons, but added that there are some boaters who may not know the difference between the diver flags and the buoys and other floating signals found on recreational waters. In those situations, a lack of knowledge can be dangerous. "There are some recreational boaters that need to be made aware that the dive flag is a dive flag," he said. "It is an indication that there is somebody below the water in that approximate area and they (boaters) need to divert their course." In a release last night, police requested that boaters who were in the Big Bay Point area of Lake Simcoe at about 5:45 p.m. Saturday contact them. Barth's funeral will be held tomorrow at Beth Isaiah Synagogue in Guelph, Ont. |
