Lexi Saldaña
Daily Herald
Until July 25, the Lifesaving Society-Saskatchewan Branch, in partnership with the Kinsmen Water Park, are returning with educational events regarding water safety.
This year’s main focus and theme is “Prepare To be Water Smart”, emphasizing smart decision making when in open water through wearing a lifejacket, active supervision of children, and boating and swimming sober.
“We’re just trying to raise awareness for drowning prevention,” said Draven Georget, a facilitator of the event and lifeguard at the Kinsmen Water Park. “We try to do interactive activities with the kids such as colouring pages, spot the difference, spot the hazard.”
Wednesday’s event was a drop-in ‘Swim To Survive’ interactive session, where participants learned key life-saving skills in case of an emergency.
“It essentially just gets kids prepared, in case they fall into the water, and get used to that disorientation,” said Georget. “We do our roll, we do a tread swim, and then we’ll do our 50 meters.”
Alongside its educational objective, administrators also made it fun for the kids.
“We did a shadow day as well for some of our lifeguards,” said Georget. “Some of the kids, we’ll dress them up in pinnies and we just follow around our lifeguards today, see how it is to patrol the deck.”
According to a 2024 Lifesaving Society report, most fatal drownings happen in open water with 53 per cent occurring in lakes and 27 per cent in rivers. The biggest contributing factors to these incidents are alcohol and/or drug impairment and failure to wear a lifejacket.
Georget emphasized parent supervision is essential.
“Our goal is to, through our lessons, through activities and weeks like these, we’ll try to throw out some information to the parents to pass on to the kids,” he said. “Following off of our policies here with making sure that the kids are always accompanied by a parent, some buddy.”
Continuing this year’s theme of smart decision making, Georget encourages those in the water to use lifejackets available at lifejacket loaner stations at select provincial parks. The stations are free outdoor kiosks where visitors can borrow Canadian-approved Personal Floatation Devices (PFDs) for the day, and return them when finished.
Though the loaner stations are only available at select provincial parks, the Kinsmen Water Park has their very own lifejackets accessible to the community.
“Recently this year, we just picked up some new life jackets to hand out to the public,” said Georget. “If a kid’s a little intimidated by the water, we’ll just throw a life jacket just upon request.”
The last day for National Drowning Prevention Week is Friday, with lessons on boating safety and PFDs.
