Water Safety (Page 6)

There are a lot of excuses the three of us could have used to not wear our lifejackets. After all, we are all confident swimmers;  the water was calm; we weren’t going very far out; we could just throw three lifejackets in the canoe; and we all felt pretty comfortable with our canoe abilities. The thing is, all of these reasons only make sense in a world where nothing goes wrong, and especially nothing goes wrong as quickly as a canoe tipping over. 

We want to see how you live to explore our lakes, rivers and shores while wearing your lifejacket. Snap a pic and send it to us for a chance to win one of 10 family packs of Mustang lifejackets.
Share your photo on social media using #LifeJacketLiving or #LaVieEnGilet to enter the contest or submit your photo online here.

Every year, over 500 Canadians die in drowning-related incidents. Of these, over 90 per cent are men. Statistics, however, often mask the individual losses though and the enormous impact a drowning death can have on an entire family. Danika Crossman, boating safety program coordinator with the Canadian Red Cross, knows this loss first hand. In 2009, her uncle drowned while he was boating with his wife on Lake Okanagan in Kelowna, B.C. He was 41.

My happiest childhood memories are of times spent at the family cottage, floating on an inner tube, lounging in a lakeside hammock, and learning how to paddle a canoe. I grew up loving water and feeling safe and confident around water. That’s because my parents did a great job of balancing out two important messages. They taught me that being around water can be incredibly fun, but that you have to be alert to the dangers at the same time.

As an aquatics professional, Janet has watched the Syrian refugee crisis with a unique perspective – and that perspective has lead her to create a free swimming program for Syrian refugee children. 

Chatting with Cheryl Wauthier reminded me of two terms that I learned from an Intro to Physics class: Potential Energy and Kinetic Energy. Essentially, potential energy is whatever energy a body has stored in itself when it is at rest. This energy is converted into kinetic energy when an outside force acts on the body and sets it into motion. When Cheryl joined the Red Cross, I like to think that all the potential energy she had in herself to do great things was released, became kinetic, and hasn’t stopped moving since.

As a four-year-old, John Napier splashed around his neighbourhood pool in Grand Prairie during his swimming lessons provided by the Canadian Red Cross. “You could say I was indoctrinated from a very young age,” he jokes. Now, Napier is a Water Safety Master Instructor Trainer with the Canadian Red Cross and has been a volunteer since 1998.

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.