This week’s news flash: Tobaggans are bad! They’ve joined the category of merry-go-rounds, teeter totters, sand boxes, swings with heavy wooden seats and all of the other things that we enjoyed as a child.
I’ve been hearing negative remarks about tobaggans for the past few weeks on the internet, but when I called up a recent story, it was about tubing, not tobaganning. I had to look up tubing to see what it was, since my only experience with “tubing” was as a water accessory.
And the story begain in 2013 at Sun Peaks when parents took their 2 year old tubing! Each, apparently, on a separate tube, but holding hands as they went down the hill.
Tubes don’t look all that stable if you’re looking for a slow, steady ride down the hill in a straight line. Well, the child fell out of her tube and the mother jumped out of hers. The child was fine. Mom broke her leg. Now they’re suing Sun Peaks for negligence in letting young children use the tube park.
Yes, it’s probably not for children that young, but mom and dad maybe should have thought that one through first.
Getting back to tobaggans, I remember when we used to pile on to them before going down the hill - the old city garbage dump was a popular location, as was the “ampitheatre” at the local college. Falling off halfway down was more fun because you only had to walk halfway back up the hill.
Still, there’s always room for accidents when children are off in their own worlds, having fun. One of my out-of-town cousins was out tobagganing with us one night and was almost hit as she stood at the bottom of the run by a tobaggan coming at her at full steam. She jumped out of the way and hit her head on something harder as she landed. She cried and swore she had a concussion and that was the end of our tobagganing for the night.
I’ve heard of more serious accidents with children on snowboards and even skiis, but I haven’t heard any call - yet - for banning either snowboards or skiis. Maybe if tobagganing was an Olympic sport there wouldn’t be any talk of banning it, either.
Life is risky. That’s part of the fun.
Wendy Coomber is the editor of the Ashcroft-Cache Creek Journal