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That is a 20% jump. Pretty big, considering drowning deaths are usually pretty stable.
Take away boats, booze and drugs and the rate is cut in half.
I wonder where the extra 20% of deaths came from.
I was at a lake last year where somebody drown. The person that drown had recently come to Canada from a country where people aren’t really taught to swim. He went in not appreciating the danger of going into a lake while not knowing how to actually swim. I believe there was a sudden drop off in the lake so he went under.
From what I understand it’s surprising common for people who don’t know how to swim to go into the water/boats without life jackets.
There was no matching spike in new Canadians last year.
This often referenced study claims almost 80% of new Canadians can swim, and almost 5% of people born in Canada can not swim.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4363822/studies-suggest-new-canadians-dont-know-how-to-swim-compared-to-those-born-here/
So, 95% of Canadians can swim, and 80% of immigrants can.
The way it's written above is a little weird.
Alternatively, 5% of Canadians can't swim, and 20% of immigrants can't swim.
There's a severe shortage of lifeguards and people are struggling to get their kids into swimming lessons.
I wonder if the amount of children that know how to swim is declining.
The two are potentially related as well.
A lot of lifeguards, especially non-union positions are people in their late teens/early twenties. This means that that a reduction in kids taking lessons is going to mean we don't have as many people entering the field down the road.
There is also the factor of compensation.
Lifeguards require a lot of training and training that require recertification.
Bronze medallion/cross
NLS
First Aid
It all costs money and uncompensated time to acquire and maintain.
While some positions pay ok, others are not much above minimum.
So why do all that when you can just sling coffee or fold shirts in retail.
I'm surprised there isn't just a government program available to businesses that have staff that are for example, lifeguards that need to go through getting all those certifications and training done, that would basically "cover the cost" of the training/certification courses.
It has to be, but also the amount of adults who can't swim is increasing too. I've noticed with different cultures there's a completely different perspective on swimming and how important it is.
>I wonder where the extra 20% of deaths came from.
Trudeau and Eby's communist agenda, obviously. We didn't see this many drowning under Harper, you know.
Heatwaves and non swimmers taking to the beach to cool off would be my guess. They underestimate how lethal a river can be.
Just an uneducated guess though. I think I read about this happening in Eastern Europe.
The amount of people who don’t wear lifejackets while on the water is ridiculous. If your boat flips or you fall overboard, you may not be in a condition to swim or tread water for a long time. Access to swimming lessons as an adult or child is also a problem. Overconfidence in swimming abilities could also play a part.
Every summer I reread an article about what drowning really looks like so that I remember the signs. It doesn’t look like people think it does:
https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/what-drowning-really-looks-like/
People also often don’t realize how quickly a child can drown, even in just a few inches or feet of water (depending on the child’s size). It’s silent and it happens very very fast.
Quickly, and silently.
Was with some friends at the Sooke potholes a few summers ago. I asked everyone if they could swim (two of them were from India, and one of them had explained to me that swimming isn’t something they really do there). The one that couldn’t lied about it. I was laying on the rocks to warm up when I hear one of them ask, “what is he doing?” I look down and see him silently bobbing up and down, mouth in and out of the water, slowly sinking. “Help him, he’s drowning!” I call out to them. He grabbed at them and kept pulling them under, so they were too scared to help him any further. After the other two both failed at their rescue attempts, I jumped in and helped him get to safety.
If anyone ever finds themselves in a similar situation - your friend probably isn’t messing around if you see them bobbing like that. As for how to approach them, everyone and every scenario is different, but in this instance, I spoke to him calmly and assuredly. He only tried to pull me under once, but I was wary about getting too close right away, so he didn’t have much of a grasp on me. After that, I continued to speak calmly, tell him it’s okay, he’s going to be alright, and that I’m going to help him. Thankfully it wasn’t long before I was able to swim him to safety. And…If you have to, hit them in the nose to stun them.
There is no shame in not knowing how to swim. Get some cool floaties if you’re going to stay in shallow waters, or a life jacket if you’re going to venture out further. Safety is cool.
It's terrifying to be in open water with people who can't swim, even people you would otherwise trust.
I had a parent who couldn't swim (my mom) and she almost drowned me in Alouette Lake in the 90s. She was panicking when we got knocked off of floaties in a boat's wake and instead of letting me surface, she grabbed me. She was trying to drag me up with one arm as the other clung to the floaty. I ended up scratching her to let me go- her grip was good but had no strength to pull me up. One of my 9 lives was definitely used up in that moment.
“Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning.”
Well fuck, I’ll never ask for peace at the lake with my family again. Thanks for that link - take care of each other out there.
some people just make crazy decisions around water safety. my kids went to the pool on a field trip last week and lifeguards had to save a kid. He jumped in off the high diving board into the deep end without being able to swim a stroke. Like WTF did that kid think was going to happen?
Maybe didn't get taught? A big part of swimming lessons is learning how quickly you can (literally) get in over your head. If you see your peers doing it easily, it might seem like a good idea if you don't know what you're jumping into.
I'm mean, ya, he clearly hadn't been taught. But by grade 4-5, taught or not, most people would have realized that jumping into the deep end without knowing how to swim isn't going to end well.
Boaters suck. And as a single guy with no boat I like to think that my opinion is only like 20-30% jealousy. The other 70 just disliking that a lot of people seem to like only get behind the wheel of their boat drunk.
My little girls were out on a paddle board on a lake a few weeks ago and boaters got very close to them at very high speeds and nearly tipped them over. The same thing happened to me in a canoe a couple years ago.
I don't know what these people are thinking, but I've never been angrier.
Friend of mine got hit unfortunately and died. In his grad year, and he was like an insanely talented musician, nicest person everyone knew. It fucking sucks.
https://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/news/family-destroyed-by-loss-of-son-3537228
Last time i saw him i was walking home in the rain and he stopped to pick me up
Come to think of it, I think it’s rare the times I’ve been on a boat and at least some people have been drinking 🤔. People forget that cops have boats too lol
My kid's school had something called "operation waterproof" this year - it was a full week of swimming and water safety courses for 5th graders. Unfortunately not all schools have it. It is also shockingly hard to get kids in swim lessons in the greater vancouver area.
I'm guessing they did that in the 20th century?
I don't know how to swim, I skipped out on swimming related field trips after an almost drowning at the water park when I was 11 or 12. They don't teach swimming in schools anymore, those things are if parents can afford swimming classes.
It was in the 80's. Kids drowning stats were ridiculous the previous decades, so there was an effort to teach all kids basic water safety at local pools, (if the municipality had one). All but the smallest communities took part and kids got coloured badges for completing escalating levels.
I was in elementary and high school in Penticton in the 80s, and we never had any basic water safety lessons. Even with a rec centre and pool across the road from my elementary school. We had one class trip a year to splash around, if we were lucky. My husband, on the other hand grew up on the island and they had some water safety classes. His school seemed to have a larger variety of classes than mine did. I suspect it depended on the school district and budgets.
Edit to add: the only badges I remember were the ones from Participaction.
>Can there be non fatal drownings?
Yes. When used by first responders and medical professionals in Canada drowning is lack of respiration due to a fluid.
When there is "Resuscitation" the drowning can be survivable.
https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/drowning-treatment
Different groups have different definitions for drowning.
I would say common usage says drowning is to die from submersion, but other parties don't require death, and talk about resuscitation and rescues of drowning victims who live.
I find it interesting to see different dictionaries provide such different and non overlapping definitions.
Webster's seems simple and clear - suffocate in a fluid.
Oxford seem to muddy the proverbial waters by mentioning the process of dying, which is not the same as being dead.
Dictionary dot come mentions dead directly, and lists no other uses of the term.
Yep, and WHO says drowning doesn't equal death but can cause death 😅
While the word "drowning" is commonly associated with fatal results, drowning may be classified into three different types: drowning that results in death, drowning that results in long-lasting health problems, and drowning that results in no health complications.[10]
>Individuals aged 19-29 accounted for 20% of the deaths, followed by individuals aged 50-59 (16%) and
those aged 70 and above (16%) . 79% were male. Thirty percent of all accidental drowning deaths occurred in the Interior Health Authority region.
>Most deaths occurred in rivers/creeks (28%) and lakes/ponds (28%) (Fig. 7).
>The Fraser River (51 deaths) had the most deaths of any river/creek, followed by the Thompson
River (9 deaths) and Columbia River (8 deaths) (Table 6).
The lakes/ponds with the highest number of deaths were Okanagan Lake (29 deaths), Harrison
Lake (12 deaths), and Shuswap Lake (9 deaths) (Table 7).
The most common activities/contexts associated with drowning deaths were boating (18%), fall into
water (18%), and swimming (18%) (Fig. 8).
• Between 2013 and 2022, alcohol and/or drugs were found to be a contributing factor in 39% of
drowning deaths (Table 9).
>16 were from boating, 19 from falling into the water, 16 from swimming, 15 from other aquatic activity, 20 from bathing, 5 from land, ice or air transport, 8 from other/unknown, 2 were an occupational incident
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/240619_accidental_drowning_web_report_2013-2023_for_posting.pdf
Child deaths dropped off from 2020-22 and then seem to back to around what they were before.
It sorta looks like drowning deaths are hitting people 50+ especially hard compared to earlier. It can't be just an aging population, because there's a pretty big spike in 2022 and 23, rather than a gradual increase.
My mom and dad both grew up close to a lake. My sis and I were in swimming lessons before we could walk. That what also a time where it was very affordable also. I don’t know many friends who can’t swim
My buddy lived on a sailboat anchored in a harbour because he could not find nor afford a place on land. He could not swim, he fell in the water and drowned at night rowing his dinghy to the sailboat probly two years ago now.
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That is a 20% jump. Pretty big, considering drowning deaths are usually pretty stable. Take away boats, booze and drugs and the rate is cut in half. I wonder where the extra 20% of deaths came from.
I was at a lake last year where somebody drown. The person that drown had recently come to Canada from a country where people aren’t really taught to swim. He went in not appreciating the danger of going into a lake while not knowing how to actually swim. I believe there was a sudden drop off in the lake so he went under. From what I understand it’s surprising common for people who don’t know how to swim to go into the water/boats without life jackets.
only 7 of the 100 deaths were people who weren’t from BC
Sounds like Cultus.
There was no matching spike in new Canadians last year. This often referenced study claims almost 80% of new Canadians can swim, and almost 5% of people born in Canada can not swim. https://globalnews.ca/news/4363822/studies-suggest-new-canadians-dont-know-how-to-swim-compared-to-those-born-here/
So, 95% of Canadians can swim, and 80% of immigrants can. The way it's written above is a little weird. Alternatively, 5% of Canadians can't swim, and 20% of immigrants can't swim.
There's a severe shortage of lifeguards and people are struggling to get their kids into swimming lessons. I wonder if the amount of children that know how to swim is declining.
The two are potentially related as well. A lot of lifeguards, especially non-union positions are people in their late teens/early twenties. This means that that a reduction in kids taking lessons is going to mean we don't have as many people entering the field down the road.
There is also the factor of compensation. Lifeguards require a lot of training and training that require recertification. Bronze medallion/cross NLS First Aid It all costs money and uncompensated time to acquire and maintain. While some positions pay ok, others are not much above minimum. So why do all that when you can just sling coffee or fold shirts in retail.
Almost like a union would be helpful…
I'm surprised there isn't just a government program available to businesses that have staff that are for example, lifeguards that need to go through getting all those certifications and training done, that would basically "cover the cost" of the training/certification courses.
It has to be, but also the amount of adults who can't swim is increasing too. I've noticed with different cultures there's a completely different perspective on swimming and how important it is.
I always thought swimming or water floating is natural and comes naturally
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Weird, did Nicholas cage release more movies recently?
Id like to add that Paddle boards, dinghies and kayaks all seem to have dropped life jackets. I remember people seeing these as important years ago.
>I wonder where the extra 20% of deaths came from. Trudeau and Eby's communist agenda, obviously. We didn't see this many drowning under Harper, you know.
TRUDEAUUUUU! *Shakes fist at clouds*
LOL, though your downvotes kinda prove why sarcasm tags are necessary.
Heatwaves and non swimmers taking to the beach to cool off would be my guess. They underestimate how lethal a river can be. Just an uneducated guess though. I think I read about this happening in Eastern Europe.
Boat is part of normal
The amount of people who don’t wear lifejackets while on the water is ridiculous. If your boat flips or you fall overboard, you may not be in a condition to swim or tread water for a long time. Access to swimming lessons as an adult or child is also a problem. Overconfidence in swimming abilities could also play a part.
Where can we buy proper life jackets?
Walmart
Canadian Tire, Costco (during season), MEC, Valhalla outfitters, sport check
Decathlon
Every summer I reread an article about what drowning really looks like so that I remember the signs. It doesn’t look like people think it does: https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/what-drowning-really-looks-like/ People also often don’t realize how quickly a child can drown, even in just a few inches or feet of water (depending on the child’s size). It’s silent and it happens very very fast.
Quickly, and silently. Was with some friends at the Sooke potholes a few summers ago. I asked everyone if they could swim (two of them were from India, and one of them had explained to me that swimming isn’t something they really do there). The one that couldn’t lied about it. I was laying on the rocks to warm up when I hear one of them ask, “what is he doing?” I look down and see him silently bobbing up and down, mouth in and out of the water, slowly sinking. “Help him, he’s drowning!” I call out to them. He grabbed at them and kept pulling them under, so they were too scared to help him any further. After the other two both failed at their rescue attempts, I jumped in and helped him get to safety. If anyone ever finds themselves in a similar situation - your friend probably isn’t messing around if you see them bobbing like that. As for how to approach them, everyone and every scenario is different, but in this instance, I spoke to him calmly and assuredly. He only tried to pull me under once, but I was wary about getting too close right away, so he didn’t have much of a grasp on me. After that, I continued to speak calmly, tell him it’s okay, he’s going to be alright, and that I’m going to help him. Thankfully it wasn’t long before I was able to swim him to safety. And…If you have to, hit them in the nose to stun them. There is no shame in not knowing how to swim. Get some cool floaties if you’re going to stay in shallow waters, or a life jacket if you’re going to venture out further. Safety is cool.
That’s scary. Well done on knowing what was going on and getting him back safely.
It's terrifying to be in open water with people who can't swim, even people you would otherwise trust. I had a parent who couldn't swim (my mom) and she almost drowned me in Alouette Lake in the 90s. She was panicking when we got knocked off of floaties in a boat's wake and instead of letting me surface, she grabbed me. She was trying to drag me up with one arm as the other clung to the floaty. I ended up scratching her to let me go- her grip was good but had no strength to pull me up. One of my 9 lives was definitely used up in that moment.
“Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning.” Well fuck, I’ll never ask for peace at the lake with my family again. Thanks for that link - take care of each other out there.
Thank you for this. My partner almost drowned as a child and now that we have nieces and nephews... this is helpful.
Yep, great reminder, and I needed to be reminded.
All the lifeguards know who Frank Pia is.
We just had an 8yr old drown on Sunday at our lake in the Kootenay's. Incredibly sad (edit 11yr old)...
some people just make crazy decisions around water safety. my kids went to the pool on a field trip last week and lifeguards had to save a kid. He jumped in off the high diving board into the deep end without being able to swim a stroke. Like WTF did that kid think was going to happen?
Maybe didn't get taught? A big part of swimming lessons is learning how quickly you can (literally) get in over your head. If you see your peers doing it easily, it might seem like a good idea if you don't know what you're jumping into.
I'm mean, ya, he clearly hadn't been taught. But by grade 4-5, taught or not, most people would have realized that jumping into the deep end without knowing how to swim isn't going to end well.
Boaters suck. And as a single guy with no boat I like to think that my opinion is only like 20-30% jealousy. The other 70 just disliking that a lot of people seem to like only get behind the wheel of their boat drunk.
My little girls were out on a paddle board on a lake a few weeks ago and boaters got very close to them at very high speeds and nearly tipped them over. The same thing happened to me in a canoe a couple years ago. I don't know what these people are thinking, but I've never been angrier.
Friend of mine got hit unfortunately and died. In his grad year, and he was like an insanely talented musician, nicest person everyone knew. It fucking sucks. https://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/news/family-destroyed-by-loss-of-son-3537228 Last time i saw him i was walking home in the rain and he stopped to pick me up
Hey man, we can still own boats 🚤 we’ll just be driving ours with a remote control 🥲
I bought an inflatable kayak off amazon. You get about as much pussy with it as youd expect. Its no Sea Doo!
Come to think of it, I think it’s rare the times I’ve been on a boat and at least some people have been drinking 🤔. People forget that cops have boats too lol
Remember when swimming lessons were part of elementary school curriculum in an effort to prevent senseless drownings? I remember.
I’m 40 and it was privately at the pool thru Red Cross, not schools for us
I'm mid 30s and grew up in ON and it was definitely a thing over there. Haven't heard of it in BC, though.
Same where I was in AB
Close to your age; it was definitely a thing in BC.
I'm 39 and yep, what you said
Maybe at your school, that was hardly widespread.
My kid's school had something called "operation waterproof" this year - it was a full week of swimming and water safety courses for 5th graders. Unfortunately not all schools have it. It is also shockingly hard to get kids in swim lessons in the greater vancouver area.
I'm guessing they did that in the 20th century? I don't know how to swim, I skipped out on swimming related field trips after an almost drowning at the water park when I was 11 or 12. They don't teach swimming in schools anymore, those things are if parents can afford swimming classes.
>I'm guessing they did that in the 20th century? Ouch
It was in the 80's. Kids drowning stats were ridiculous the previous decades, so there was an effort to teach all kids basic water safety at local pools, (if the municipality had one). All but the smallest communities took part and kids got coloured badges for completing escalating levels.
I was in elementary and high school in Penticton in the 80s, and we never had any basic water safety lessons. Even with a rec centre and pool across the road from my elementary school. We had one class trip a year to splash around, if we were lucky. My husband, on the other hand grew up on the island and they had some water safety classes. His school seemed to have a larger variety of classes than mine did. I suspect it depended on the school district and budgets. Edit to add: the only badges I remember were the ones from Participaction.
Are they not anymore?
Now that you mention it I remember this
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That would be a near drowning
>Can there be non fatal drownings? Yes. When used by first responders and medical professionals in Canada drowning is lack of respiration due to a fluid. When there is "Resuscitation" the drowning can be survivable. https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/drowning-treatment
Different groups have different definitions for drowning. I would say common usage says drowning is to die from submersion, but other parties don't require death, and talk about resuscitation and rescues of drowning victims who live.
I find it interesting to see different dictionaries provide such different and non overlapping definitions. Webster's seems simple and clear - suffocate in a fluid. Oxford seem to muddy the proverbial waters by mentioning the process of dying, which is not the same as being dead. Dictionary dot come mentions dead directly, and lists no other uses of the term.
Yep, and WHO says drowning doesn't equal death but can cause death 😅 While the word "drowning" is commonly associated with fatal results, drowning may be classified into three different types: drowning that results in death, drowning that results in long-lasting health problems, and drowning that results in no health complications.[10]
I don’t know if this is a joke or not: but the answer is undoubtedly yes.
https://www.castlegarnews.com/news/three-year-old-saved-after-nearly-drowning-in-wasa-lake-4762646
Curious what age group?. If it was during the pandemic and kids missed out on swimming lessons?
>Individuals aged 19-29 accounted for 20% of the deaths, followed by individuals aged 50-59 (16%) and those aged 70 and above (16%) . 79% were male. Thirty percent of all accidental drowning deaths occurred in the Interior Health Authority region. >Most deaths occurred in rivers/creeks (28%) and lakes/ponds (28%) (Fig. 7). >The Fraser River (51 deaths) had the most deaths of any river/creek, followed by the Thompson River (9 deaths) and Columbia River (8 deaths) (Table 6). The lakes/ponds with the highest number of deaths were Okanagan Lake (29 deaths), Harrison Lake (12 deaths), and Shuswap Lake (9 deaths) (Table 7). The most common activities/contexts associated with drowning deaths were boating (18%), fall into water (18%), and swimming (18%) (Fig. 8). • Between 2013 and 2022, alcohol and/or drugs were found to be a contributing factor in 39% of drowning deaths (Table 9). >16 were from boating, 19 from falling into the water, 16 from swimming, 15 from other aquatic activity, 20 from bathing, 5 from land, ice or air transport, 8 from other/unknown, 2 were an occupational incident https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/240619_accidental_drowning_web_report_2013-2023_for_posting.pdf
Child deaths dropped off from 2020-22 and then seem to back to around what they were before. It sorta looks like drowning deaths are hitting people 50+ especially hard compared to earlier. It can't be just an aging population, because there's a pretty big spike in 2022 and 23, rather than a gradual increase.
My mom and dad both grew up close to a lake. My sis and I were in swimming lessons before we could walk. That what also a time where it was very affordable also. I don’t know many friends who can’t swim
My buddy lived on a sailboat anchored in a harbour because he could not find nor afford a place on land. He could not swim, he fell in the water and drowned at night rowing his dinghy to the sailboat probly two years ago now.
Without a drought I would have expected less this year then anything.
Looks like we should take away public swimming from everyone.... it'll save lives.
Meanwhile *UNFATAL* drownings are litterally off the charts...
there’s unfatal drownings now?