Free swimming lessons offered in Montreal North

The public pool at Parc Saint-Laurent in Montreal North is one of several in the borough offering free swimming lessons this summer.

The main goal of the program is to promote water safety and make swimming lessons accessible.

“Parents are super happy to have access to lessons like this for their kids,” said Corinne Sabetti, head lifesaving instructor for the Montreal North borough.

Phillipe Thermidor, Borough Councillor for Montreal North, wants to ensure that everyone can benefit from the free swimming lessons.

“We want that every child, regardless of the financial situation, is able to learn some skills for their safety,” he said.

“We started a pilot project last year after we stopped having sessions of classes for children during the summer and we found it was important for children to be able to swim during the summer,” said Sabetti. “We started last year as a small project and it went super great.”

“It was a lot of fun and we had a lot of demand from parents and everything, so this year we brought back the project on a little bit of a bigger scale.”

The courses are offered five days a week. New this year is lifesaving classes on Fridays, where individuals can learn a variety of techniques.

“With beginners we of course focus on water safety and we focus on like floating, but since we have lessons for beginners, intermediate and advanced, we focus on all techniques from crawl to back crawl, and then if they’re more advanced we can do some more advanced techniques,” says Sabetti.

The emphasis is on swim safety, as there have been five drownings in Quebec so far this year. At the same time last year, there were 13 reported.

According to the Montreal Children’s Hospital, for every drowning reported, there are 10 more children that end up in ERs due to near-drownings, which is why they strongly recommend swimming lessons.

Julie Carignan is a parent, who has two children are enrolled in the program. She says there are several benefits.

“As a parent, it’s very reassuring to know that my kids know how to swim well. And it’s great that it’s offered like that to the people. I wish there were many places like this in Montreal,” said Carignan.

On Tuesday morning, there were two groups in the pool – one of children aged five and up, a class for beginners, and another of kids aged seven and up for intermediate lessons.

Beginner lessons are in the shallow end of the pool where there’s always one instructor for a group of six children, since they can’t yet swim independently.

For intermediate classes, the students are more independent and able to do a full lap around the pool.

Patrick Mendonca attended the swimming lessons on Tuesday.

“I like coming to swimming lessons because every time I go on vacation, I can learn how to swim for the ocean,” he said.