The head cook aboard a Great Lakes freighter that docked in Sarnia due to a COVID-19 outbreak is the pandemic’s first casualty in the Canadian shipping industry. Renato Battisti, a veteran cook from Quebec City, was quarantined along with the rest of a 19-person crew that arrived at the Sarnia Harbour aboard the asphalt-bitumen-chemical tanker Damia Desgagnés in late September. Battisti died this past Saturday in London hospital at age 61. James Given, president of the Seafarers International Union of Canada, said news of the first – and only – COVID-19 death among their roughly 20,000 members has hit the organization hard.
