The body of a 15-year-old boy on a school trip to Algonquin Park has been found.After a day of exhaustive searches, the Ontario Provincial Police recovered Jeremiah Perry’s body around 3:25 p.m. on Wednesday, notifying the boy’s parents before confirming his death publicly.Perry had been swimming with his classmates in Big Trout Lake when he went underwater and did not resurface, said Killaloe OPP spokesperson Catherine Yarmel.Ontario Provincial Police were notified around 8 p.m, that he was missing with the search stretching overnight and well into Wednesday. 11 kids have been flown to the park’s welcome centre by sea plane to be taken home, out of 33 in total on the trip.The OPP confirmed Perry’s death to Shari Schwartz-Maltz, spokeswoman from TSDB and Tiffany Ford, the Toronto District School Board trustee for Ward 4.The kids were separated into two groups, with Perry’s group and his older brother taken out of the woods first. The sea plane they’d been using could only remove two or three people at a time.“It’s been a hard day. Really, really hard day. I’ve been here for nine years, there’s never been an incident like this before. I can’t remember seeing people so upset,” Schwartz-Maltz said.Perry was a student at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute in North York and joined some of his classmates and other students from Westview Centennial Secondary School on an annual excursion to Algonquin Park.A child and youth counsellor is on site at Big Trout Lake and will travel back by bus with the students.“We are fortunate she (the counsellor) was able to go because she knows the kids from the school... It’s important they’re there to support each other,” Schwartz-Maltz said.Parents of students on the trip were called Tuesday night and informed of the incident, with some coming to C.W. Jeffreys Collegiate Institute on Wednesday asking for more information.& ...
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