In response to the invitation, I wrote to the victim's daughter and she replied. She told me the details of her father's tragic death, and asked me to post her message for her. Below is her response. We've heard it many times here before, although discussion and sharing of information is always helpful, all the uninformed speculation is not helpful. When you read this, all those messages about not sharing air etc, that goes on so soon after the incident will seem pretty silly. Although its almost four years later, here are the facts. Its unfortunate that we aren't able to get this kind of information more contemporaneous to the events, but thats the way it is.
It would appear that the only other lesson for us divers from this incident are the hazards of diving with unseen medical problems.
I would personally like to thank Valérie and the Garceau family for sharing this with us.
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Hi Diver Rick,
thank you for writing to me, I just found the Scubaboard site and the forum discussing about my father death in 2003.
(by the way, sorry for my english I'm french canadian)
This is some info about my dad's accident:
(Can you please post it on scubaboard where users of this site could see the information? I'm new to the scubaboard and don't know how to use it well for now, and a lot of people are writing to me to know more since I've add a news on the forum. Many thanks if you do so and tell me when and where you transfer the information.)
My father was really Jean Garceau a doctor in Trois-Rivières, Québec almost 52 years old, very good health condition. He was a lover of water sports and was doing windsurfing too.
Two weeks before the accident, my father was windsurfing at the cottage (theres a lake) and he made a bad fall, he fell on his stomach, which cut his breath. He told us that he made a bad fall and hurt his side. But nothing alarming. Two weeks later he went to Brookville, to dive and died.
We learned by the autopsy that his spleen burst (ruptured) because of the pressure of the water. His spleen ruptured because when he fell on the windsurfing board it injured his spleen, and in 2 weeks the spleen had a lot of inflammation and was very fragile, but we didn't know that and he didn't know that even if he was a doctor because it's internal and there is no way to see that. If he did not went diving, he wouldn't be dead, if he would have dive 2 months after the fall from the windsurfing board he would be ok. But that's life. So it was a health condition that caused his death.
I still cannot believe he's dead; we (family) were not in Brockville with him. I have the feeling that someday he will come back from Brookville! He left behind my mom, and his 3 daughters, me Valerie 25 at the time, Alexandrine 18 at the time and Anne Laurence 13 at the time.
I hope this information will help some divers. If you have any other questions you know where to find me.
Valérie Garceau
