Although my wife finds it a bit creepy, I enjoy visiting old cemeteries. You learn a lot about who the early settlers were. Sometimes you have to read between the lines, to find patterns in the lives and deaths. And sometimes read between the stones, to notice whole clans of people.

I noticed this tombstone while browsing through an old cemetery in Ottawa south:

What happened that two brothers drowned the same day? What would the family response be? 

The cemetery is right beside the Rideau River. Did the family live close to the river? Did the children learn to swim or not?

I grew up in the Maritimes, part of the first generation of kids that learned to swim as a matter of routine. For my grandfather, my uncles, and many of my cousins, who worked on the sea fishing, learning to swim would have been bizarre. The Ocean is that thing that kills you, it is not entertainment. It is a threat. Ergo, no swimming lessons. (And two uncles did drown, one as an adult when out fishing, one as a child when he fell off the dock and drowned in 3′ of water).

Here is the adjacent family tombstone: