COLLINGWOOD, Ont. - For the third time in three weeks, tragedy has struck at a ski resort in central Ontario.
A 17-year-old girl died Thursday morning at Blue Mountain Resort, west of Collingwood, Ont., after skiing into a tree.
Provincial police Const. Theresa Van Boven said the girl was transported to hospital where she later was pronounced dead.
"Preliminary investigations revealed the female skier was travelling down a run and collided with a tree," Van Boven said.
The girl, identified as Elisabeth Reurink, a Grade 12 student at Catholic Central High School in London, Ont., was wearing a helmet.
Schoolmates returning to London from Collingwood were met by grief counsellors as their bus arrived at the school.
A planned concert at the school Thursday night, to pay for musical instruments, was postponed.
An award-winning student and track athlete, Reurink was "real smart, exceptionally gifted," said Jacob Chevalier, 17, a Grade 12 student who'd been "good friends" with the teen since Grade 9.
"She wasn't just an A student -- she was A plus," he said. "She was a person who got 95s."
Authorities hadn't released the teen's name Thursday night, but word quickly spread through the school community and on Facebook on the Internet.
"People have been texting each other and expressing disbelief," Chevalier said.
In a statement by school board spokesman John Boles, education director Wilma de Rond called the student "a lovely young woman who was very involved with athletics, an excellent scholar and very devoted to her family."
De Rond said Reurink had been wearing a safety helmet and was skiing in the company of a teacher at the time.
The trip was part of the school's physical education curriculum, said Boles.
Resort spokeswoman Kelly O'Neil said she could not comment because it was an active police investigation.
Provincial police and forensic identification officers are investigating, Van Boven said.
Last Sunday, a 45-year-old Toronto man died at Beaver Valley Ski Club, about 30 kilometres southwest of Collingwood.
John Zsolt, who was described as a skilled snowboarder and was wearing a helmet, fell and crashed into a tree.
On Feb. 18, a 13-year-old South Korean visa student named Boo Sung "James" Moon was skiing with other students from his Richmond Hill, Ont., school at Snow Valley Resort, northwest of Barrie, when he lost control and hit a tree.
Moon was not wearing a helmet. An autopsy concluded his cause of death was consistent with his injuries, but no details were released.
His death renewed calls for legislation that would require children to wear helmets while skiing, but Premier Dalton McGuinty dismissed the idea.
Blue Mountain Resort has also been the scene of two other serious accidents this winter.
