The charge that 37-year-old David Sillars was nailed on? CUII. Yep - canoeing under influence of intoxicants.
You read that right:
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. In the eyes of the law, then, being drunk while paddling an inflatable dinghy is the same thing as being drunk while driving a pickup truck. Smoking a joint and paddling a canoe is equal to smoking a joint and driving a car. All of the same penalties, including mandatory minimum sentences, apply. Yet you cannot be charged for impaired operation of a bike, because the Criminal Code says land vehicles must be motorized to count.
Sillars is looking at a potential sentence of life in prison, though it being Canada, he'll probably get somewhere between two and ten years. The takeaway here: water and alcohol don't mix, any more than alcohol and motor vehicles.
To be sure, there was a fatality involved; an eight year-old boy riding in the canoe was swept over a waterfall and drowned.
