Children who can’t swim keep finding their way to water, which is why Eric Shendelman is leading a new initiative aimed at making water safety education more accessible.
Shendelman, president of Shendy’s Swim School in Toronto and partner with the Camp Safety Network, is a long-time drowning and injury prevention advocate. He currently chairs a national committee with the Canadian Drowning Prevention Coalition and has also served as president of the Ontario Camps Association.
“We’re putting ‘Swim to Survive’ as one of our top priorities this coming year,” said Shendelman, referring to a program created by the Lifesaving Society.
The ‘Swim to Survive’ model covers the essential skills needed to survive an unexpected fall into deep water. It focuses on teaching youth how to assess their surroundings, roll into deep water, tread water for one minute and swim 50 metres.
About 47 per cent of drownings in Ontario occur in lakes or ponds, followed by 20 per cent in rivers, according to the Lifesaving Society’s latest drowning report.
“Having already offered this program to some local schools that are in so much need, my staff saw that half the kids going through this program weren’t able to swim,” Shendelman said.
“Whether it’s at-risk youth, whether it’s those that don’t have access to lessons, whether it’s other populations that are considered not having access, they’re finding their way into water and then we’ll hear [about] these senseless drownings.”
In Dryden, Ont., 12-year-old Joyclyn Grant and her brother, 15-year-old Kayden Grant, drowned in the Wabigoon River at the end of July.
In a region surrounded by lakes and rivers, the family is advocating for water safety and swimming lessons for all school-aged children through a new foundation called Water Wings.
Meanwhile, in southern Ontario, Shendelman is trying to achieve something similar through piloting something called the Safe Futures initiative, where he hopes to get businesses, corporations and other donors to fund water safety education for at-risk youth in grades three and seven.
Shendelman’s project is largely inspired by the July 2017 death of Jeremiah Perry, a 15-year-old Toronto student who drowned during a school canoe trip to Algonquin Provincial Park.
“Half those kids couldn’t do the swim test, which was the Swim to Survive test, and it’s just proving that nothing truly has been done through the school board until now,” he said.
While school boards can opt into the existing Swim to Survive program, it’s not a mandatory part of the Ontario curriculum, Shendelman explained.
For schools that don’t have pools readily available, it isn’t always feasible to include swimming or water safety lessons into students’ physical education, he said.
“It appears that there’s just a lot of legwork to do and they also have to worry about educating the kids in math and science,” Shendelman said.
The Safe Futures initiative would take costs out of the equation, so neither school boards nor families would have to foot the bill.
“I think that’s how principals and superintendents would buy in,” he said. “The kids get on the bus. The bathing suits they don’t have are included, the snack they don’t have is included. To get them to actually follow through on this initiative, I think that truly it has to be free.”
Using one of his own facilities at Shendy’s Swim School, Shendelman is hoping to offer the first sessions in October.
“Local businesses can help fund this project around the community and make it a community project,” he said. “The next step for us is to go after local city councillors to get them on board.”
By gathering feedback from the initial participants, Shendelman’s hope is that this model can be replicated elsewhere.
“It’s the right time of year to start talking about these stories because there are so many people accessing water now right up to Labour Day and beyond, right?” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re going to hear a few more [drowning] stories in the next week or so.”
