An Ordeal At Sea Ends At Pearson
Posted February 22, 2010 6:43 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Emotions ran high at Pearson International Airport as the Canadian students who survived an ordeal at sea arrived home Monday morning.
“We were just thinking the worst,” one survivor said.
“We thought our signal had failed and nobody knew and it could be weeks before we were saved,” she added.
The young people, who survived the sinking of the S.V. Concordia off the coast of Brazil, were reunited with their parents behind closed doors around 6am.
Friends and supporters also waited for the survivors at the airport holding signs, including one that read “welcome home floaties.”
Peter Kent, minister of state for Foreign Affairs, was also at the terminal and said “there is a great sense of appreciation and satisfaction that everything came together very well.”
However, Kent added that there would be an investigation both in Canada and in Brazil.
The 42 high school and university students were among the 64 people who were on board the Concordia when it capsized Wednesday. The Brazilian Navy received a distress call from the three-masted Nova Scotia-based ship and everyone was rescued from rafts Friday and taken to safety in Rio De Janeiro.
The group collected rain water to drink and spent 40 hours on the rough seas in life rafts as they waited for help.
“We knew there was going to be an end to it, we just didn’t know when,” biology teacher Ruth McArthur said.
“One group sang a whole bunch of Disney songs… I think I was throwing up then so I didn’t participate unfortunately.”
The students were spending five months at sea as part of the Class Afloat program run by West Island College International and left Canada in September.
The Canadians spent most of the day Sunday replacing travel documents and other important items lost at sea. They arrived in Toronto from Sao Paulo.
With files from the Canadian Press
