With the next provincial election approaching and two people reportedly drowned after falling into the Lachine Canal on Saturday night, the Lifesaving Society is asking the next government to make its “Swim to Survive” program permanent, which allows people to learn to swim. She also insists on the need to increase drowning prevention in several languages among newcomers, who are still overrepresented in these tragedies.
“We hope that the next government will be able to ensure the sustainability of this training, because, according to the coroner, it is by investing in young students that we will be able to avoid many drownings in the future,” explains the executive director and spokesperson for the Lifesaving Society, Raynald Hawkins. “As we can see, one in two children is at risk of drowning, because they can’t swim.”
Although the number of drownings in the province is similar to last year, with 22 drownings recorded in 2026, the Lifesaving Society notes a significant increase in drownings in rivers, for 60 per cent of them, compared to 27 per cent in 2025.
“We don’t know the strengths of the river and sometimes our rivers seem attractive to us, because they seem calm on the surface (…), but sometimes, our currents are as strong, if not stronger, than during the spring freshet, it’s just that the volumes of water are lower,” explains Hawkins, who advises favoring rivers with a beach.
He also reminds us of the importance of not swimming alone, because, according to him, half of the people who drown in Quebec were drowning.
“Near the water, on the water, and in the water, never be alone,” he insists.
Hawkins also said he is concerned about seeing cases this year involving young adults losing their lives in residential pools.
“Most of the time (for residential pools), it’s young children under the age of six or older people with dementia,” he says. According to him, these cases show the need to make the population aware of their real ability to swim.
Are we overestimating the ability to swim?
The Lifesaving Society notes an increasingly pronounced overrepresentation of newcomers in cases of drowning deaths. She explains that she is in contact with community organizations that work with these people, to support prevention messages and encourage them to learn to swim.
“Organizations realize that most of their beneficiaries know how to swim, but rarely swim,” adds Hawkins.
For him, it is imperative to develop and make available to newcomers awareness-raising and prevention materials in their mother tongue.
While data from the Drowning Prevention Research Centre of Canada shows that more than half of accidental drowning deaths involve a rescue attempt, two-thirds of victims who wanted to rescue were untrained.
The Lifesaving Society explains that the best attitude to adopt to help a person in difficulty in the water is to find an object that can be handed to the person so that he or she can hold on to it.
Two potential victims in Lachine
The Montreal Fire Department (SIM) explained Sunday morning that it had intervened the day before shortly before midnight to rescue two people who had fallen into the Lachine Canal, near René-Lévesque Park.
“One of the two people fell into the water and the second tried to rescue him,” the SIM statement said. However, we have no additional information about the exact circumstances of the event.”
The sonar from one of the SIM boats would have made it possible to locate the two victims and recover them before being taken care of and transported by Urgences santé.
The SIM explains that it is not yet able to confirm the death of the victims as well as their age and sex.
Two SIM boats and one from the Canadian Coast Guard reportedly took turns during the operation, which ended around 2 a.m. in the early morning.
Following this call, SIM resources were dispatched to the scene. The search was conducted jointly by two SIM boats and a Canadian Coast Guard boat, which took turns during the operation.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
