MONTREAL ? This summer, the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn on Sherbrooke St. W. isn?t strictly reserved for hotel clients.
Once a week, the pool is available for Sun Youth day campers, where about 50 children age 5 to 8 are learning how to swim.
The community organization has been offering summer day camps for 20 years, but this is the first time Sun Youth is offering swimming lessons, in partnership with the Holiday Inn and the Montreal Institute of Swimming.
For Ernest Rosa, director of recreation and sports at Sun Youth, the main goal of these lessons is to teach children about water safety in order to prevent drownings.
?The best thing for kids is to not be afraid of the water, and the only way for them not be afraid is to be with people who can teach them how to be safe,? Rosa said.
According to the Lifesaving Society, thanks to increased water safety awareness, the number of fatal drownings in Quebec has been on a steady decrease, from an average of 125 drownings per year in the 1990s to an average of 80 per year from 2000 to 2010.
But there were still 45 reported drownings by mid-July last year, plus the near-drowning of a 5-year-old boy at Jean Drapeau beach ? an incident that resonated with Rosa.
?It just hit home because it was somewhere we were going with the day camp kids,? Rosa said. ?My first thought process was to speak to one of our executive directors to find some money ? some funding, to do something.?
An anonymous donor who calls himself ?Mr. Bike Man? immediately reached out to the organization after the near-drowning to offer support, and donated life jackets for every child.
?All of the kids have their life-jacket for beaches, water slides ? any situation where it could be dangerous for them,? Rosa said.
But Rosa wanted children to learn to be comfortable in the water.
?We didn?t want to put a Band-Aid on a situation that?s been going on for years,? Rosa said.
So he contacted the owners of the Montreal Institute of Swimming, a company that offers private swimming lessons in 16 pools around Montreal at the Holiday Inn.
?There are different ways hotels can try and help the community, so this seemed like a perfect fit for us,? said Johanne Galipeau, sales manager at the hotel.
The swimming instructors at the day camp are all MIS employees. During every lesson, children practise entering and exiting the water safely, as well as learning how to float on their backs.
?Swimming is not only a sport, it?s actually about survival, and it?s about safety,? said Marc Donatelli, one of the instructors and owners of MIS. ?The No. 1 way to prevent drownings is to float on your back and stick out your tummy. Any kid can survive until a parent can get there if they can just float on their back.?
Sun Youth isn?t the only organization trying to reduce drownings.
For the last few years, the Quebec Lifesaving Society has been pushing for mandatory swimming lessons across the province.
Executive director Raynald Hawkins said the organization is in talks with the provincial government to implement its Swim to Survive program in schools for all Grade 3 students.
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