Deaths in Quebec are down but officials still concerned

Three confirmed drownings and a possible fourth heralded a grim run-up to National Drowning Prevention Week in Quebec.

Fifteen-year-old Mohamed Ndimurwanko scaled a fence and jumped into a public swimming pool in Cartierville late on Saturday night. He died in a hospital on Sunday.

A 75-year-old Quebec City man fishing with another man in the Saguenay–Lac-St-Jean region on Friday, in the Zone d’exploitation contrôlée Martin-Valin, drowned after their boat tipped.

A 34-year-old Montreal man swimming with a friend in NotreDame-du-Laus in the Outaouais region on July 12 suddenly sank. His body was recovered on July 14.

As of Monday afternoon, the search for a man reported to have gone under while attempting to swim in the St. Lawrence River in Pointe-aux-Trembles Sunday afternoon had yielded no results.

And former NHL goalie Ray Emery drowned on Sunday after he jumped off a boat in a Hamilton harbour to go swimming in Lake Ontario. Friends called emergency services around 6 a.m. when he didn’t resurface, police said. His body was recovered after a sevenhour search, about 20 yards from where he went in.

So far this year in Quebec, there have been 27 confirmed drownings.

The Lifesaving Society, a national, volunteer and charitable organization made up of 10 provincial and territorial branches, designates the third week of July as a time to focus community attention on drowning and drowning prevention.

In 2017, there were four drownings during Drowning Prevention week, said Raynald Hawkins, director of Quebec’s branch, the Société de Sauvetage du Québec.

Almost three-quarters of drownings take place between May and September, Hawkins said, with the peak between mid-July and midAugust. Quebec’s annual two-week construction holiday is set to start July22.

The good news is that the number of drownings has decreased, he said. In the 1980s, there were on average 200 drownings every year.

Unofficial statistics for 2017 put the number at 59, with 61 in 2016 and 66 in 2015.

“But we would like to see our numbers go down even further,” Hawkins said, adding that the majority of drownings are preventable.

If all boaters wore life jackets or personal flotation devices, for instance, there would be 20 fewer drownings in the province. In 80 per cent of boat-related drownings, the victims were either not wearing PFDs or were not wearing them properly.

And the importance of knowing how to swim cannot be overestimated: 50 per cent of drowning victims were non-swimmers or poor swimmers, according to relatives. Hawkins also reminded parents and other adults supervising children in the water that such supervision requires one’s full attention.

“You cannot play with your phone,” he said.

We teach our children that they can’t cross the street on their own, but we don’t impose the same rules for swimming pools or lakes, he said. We should.

A responsible adult should be in the water with children younger than five, and keep them within arm’s reach.

Most drowning victims are male and alcohol is often a factor.

Hawkins said summer sun and heat can cause us to become dehydrated and to absorb alcohol more quickly than we would otherwise. And a person’s balance on board a boat is not as good as it is on land, so that one beer or a glass of wine aboard a boat can have the effect of three on land.