Boating accident claims life of local teen

A community is in mourning this week after a boating accident Saturday afternoon on Lake of the Woods took the life of a Nestor Falls teen.
It is thought 17-year-old Devin Allison was on his way to pick up a friend to go fishing around 2:30 p.m. when his boat struck a deadhead near King Island (Sabaskong Bay), causing him to be thrown into the water.
Kenora OPP would not say if this was the case, but Cst. Sue Cain did confirm the teen was not wearing a lifejacket at the time of the accident.
“Certainly whenever something like this occurs, it’s a tragic situation, one that we never like to see,” Cst. Cain said this morning.
The accident remains under investigation.
The OPP’s Underwater Search and Recovery Unit arrived on the scene Monday and recovered the teen’s body late that afternoon in the Split Rock channel area, confirming the community’s worst fear.
A weekend search by the Kenora OPP’s Marine Unit had proven futile.
“It’s just a terrible thing when a young life is lost,” said Emo Reeve Russ Fortier, a family friend. “My sympathy goes out to them.”
“All you can do is pray.”
A local resident, who wished to remain unnamed, said she remembers Allison, who graduated from Fort Frances High School just this past June, as being “a very nice young man.”
“They’re all very sad, they’re just devastated,” she said of Allison’s friends. “They were very close. All of those kids up there around that age group are close,”
He is survived by his parents, Donna and Peter, and sister, Nadia.
Funeral services will be held this Friday at 2 p.m. at Bass Lake Park in Nestor Falls.
The Devin Allison Memorial Bursary is being set up for a graduating student from Fort High who will be pursuing further education in the field of History at a Canadian university.
Donations may be made c/o Mr. Peter Allison, Box 99, Nestor Falls, Ont., P0X 1K0.