Kelly Currie wants parents to think twice about leaving their above ground pool without a fence.

The Enniskillen Township woman knows easing off on safety precautions could cost a child’s life. Her two year-old daughter, Kiersten, drowned in her family’s pool in Courtright, 25 years ago even though both her father and brother were home.

Currie, then 20, had just moved home with her children. She and Kiersten spent lots of time in the family pool. “We swam pretty much every day,” she says.

Currie had gone out with friends for the night leaving her girls, Kiersten and 14 month-old Brooklyn with her brother, who was an excellent caregiver.

Kiersten and her brother were downstairs, when Currie’s dad came home from work. Kiersten bounded up the stairs to greet him, but he slipped in the bathroom first.
Without either of the men knowing, the little girl found a tiny hole in the screen door on the patio and went out to the pool.

Currie’s dad tried to revive her while they waited for help to arrive. Kiersten didn’t survive.

While Currie has never felt her family could have done anything different, she says they all feel the guilt of what happened.

“There’s never been any blame whatsoever. Like, it’s what they would feel about it. Absolutely. We all do. I mean, even me not being there, I feel it. I blame myself 100 per cent… you feel like you should have been there or, you know, maybe something would have been different.”

The next few years were difficult. Currie had planned to move to her own apartment the week after Kiersten died. That waited for a bit. But then, she was on her own, with a 14 month-old, dealing with the grief of losing a child..

“It’s unbelievable. You can’t explain it either. It’s like a hole, it really is. It’s there all the time, … if you even think about her, it’s like, you just feel like it’s like an emptiness or something, right? You can’t, can’t fix it or fill in. I mean, it’s just there.”

Currie went to college, remarried and had three more children. And, despite her tragic loss, she agreed there is a pool at the house.

They had very strict rules about going outside and keeping the doors to the pool locked.

And she would tell other parents they can “never do too much” to keep children are safe around water. “Make sure the fence is there, make sure there is a lock,” she says.

“People are like, ‘we have an above ground pool, why do we need a fence?’ And we made the mistake of not having a gate on the stairs. That’s how she got there. We thought we were keeping her inside and safe. I think children are little ninjas. They can get into or out of anything.”