I agree with Tom completely about the knife thing.. forget it. If you're gonna
take anything like that (in canada) take bear spray.

In all honesty though Mattress - don't you think one of the best suggestions in
the context of coastal BC would acutally be *west coast trail* and not JDF? realisticly
the only people who have died on WCT have been on surge channels that are now explicity
not reccomended and out of bounds. While yes, it's not risk free, given the amount of traffic and patrol on the trail, if this person gets in trouble on the trail the only likely outcome is that it costs them a bunch of money for an evacuation by parks canada or the indian bands. I mean, maybe it's just my alberta rockies background that makes me treat anything with 30 people a day going in at the trailhead like a zoo, but realisticly that while
WCT might have more opportunities to do something dumb than JDF, there's an awful lot of people on it, so it would be a lot harder to do something dumb and have it end up being fatal. You'd get noticed and evac'ed.

I'd stick to maybe a PLB - and remind the father how many people walk across that trail every day.