Men targeted in safe-boating campaign
Water safety promoted by Northwest Territories Recreation and Parks Association
Sarah Ladik
Northern News Services
Thursday, August 18, 2016
INUVIK
Not only does the NWT have some of the highest rates of drowning in Canada, those deaths overwhelmingly involve men.
Kate Snow poses for a photo telling people about why she wears a life jacket, which will eventually be included in the NWT Parks and Recreation Association online campaign for safer boating habits. - Sarah Ladik/NNSL photo
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"Men are the ones out there doing the boating, the fishing, the hunting," said Rose Johnson, aquatics co-ordinator for the Northwest Territories Recreation and Parks Association.
"Most drownings that happen in the NWT are adult males, and we want to focus on how we might go about changing that."
That's not what people think of when it comes to typical drowning victims in the rest of the country, who tend to be children so when Transportation Canada came up with a grant in 2014, the association used it to research male behaviour on the water, eventually coming up with a boat-safety campaign designed specifically for them, which launched on Aug. 14.
"We did focus groups and semi-private interviews, and what we found was that the communities are really knowledgeable. They know what they need," said Johnson.
"All of the resources we created, we brought them back to the communities for approval, to make sure they worked for people."
Those studies took place in Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Deline.
Inuvik, specifically, asked for an online campaign in addition to the poster campaign to help get the message across. By and large, Johnson said the idea that seems to resonate with the focus groups was that of staying safe in order to keep taking care of family.
"It's a bit early to tell what the reception will be," she said, explaining that she would spend Aug. 15 putting up posters around town in places men who go boating are likely to frequent.
"We've done a bit of posting online on Facebook and Twitter and, so far, the feedback from the communities is good. We're pretty hopeful it will reach who it needs to reach," Johnson said.
While not many people actually came out to the launch of the campaign at the Midnight Sun Complex, 21 men in Inuvik participated in the study, along with 18 men in Deline and 16 men in Fort Simpson.
The latest statistics available show that 10 people drowned in the NWT in 2012 and 2013 combined, which is much higher than the Canadian average. Per capita, between 1991 and 2010, the average rate of boating fatalities in the NWT was 9.6 per 100,000 people. For the country as a whole, it was 0.6 per 100,000 people.
"It's such a short season, boating, but so very important because so many people are out on the water," said Johnson.
"When a drowning happens, it's not just one person or one family, it affects the whole community."
