Nearly 1,500 teens who gathered for a party in Canada trashed a house, causing $70,000 in damage

Nearly 1,500 teens who gathered for a party in Canada trashed a house, causing $70,000 in damage

... which, I believe, is the entire GDP of Canada.

Now THAT's a party!

When I went back to one of my high school reunions, one of my old school chums told me about a party I was not invited to (gee, thanks, high school chums!), which took place in the summer after we graduated. One of the guy's parents had a nice cottage on Lake Ontario, and the well-to-do parents went away for an extended vacation. The guy invited just about everyone he knew to come over one night and BYOB. All of those people invited everyone else they knew, and the thing went ballistic by the standards of the world before social media. There were so many people, and they got so drunk, that one group commandeered the parents' expensive boat and several of the dad's prized firearms for a midnight sail on Lake Ontario, where they proceeded to shoot guns away from shore and throw up a lot. Unfortunately, they somehow managed to sink the boat, and the entire armory with it (nobody seemed clear how this happened), causing all of them to paddle for shore in their life jackets or clinging to anything that would float, while the Coast Guard dispatched every available man to the area.

Nobody died or was seriously injured, but the guy's parents lost a gorgeous yacht and a nice collection of weapons. In addition, their cottage was utterly trashed by dozens of drunken kids in their late teens (the drinking age was 18 then, not that it matters). Talk about a parents' nightmare! How much damage was there? Well, the party linked above caused $70,000 worth of damages, and that's a lot, but I'm sure that the famous Lake Ontario party must have topped that easily in today's dollars, and it took fewer than a hundred kids, not 1500. It was a scene from hell.

Damn. I wish I had been invited.

(My classmates didn't hate me. They just thought I was too much of a child for this party, and they were right. I wasn't old enough to drink or drive a car. That's one of the curses of being younger than your classmates.)

Anyway ...

When Rick told me the story, I said "Gallons of rum, drunken slobs discharging firearms, and sunken ships? That's not a party. It's a Johnny Depp movie."