Smoky Lake Lions Club hosts swimming lessons

By Irene van der Kloet 
 
For 50 years, the Smoky Lake Lions Club has been hosting swimming lessons at Hanmore
Lake. This year, the lessons were held from July 17-21. These swimming lessons are for
children ages 0-12, and there is always huge interest from the wider region. “There is more
demand than we can meet, so we have to select,” Lion Dennis Jonker, president of the Smoky
Lake Lions Club and the swimming lesson organizer, says. “Our Lions Club funds these
lessons; we only ask for a $10 registration fee. We are restricted in the number of children we
can have here, first by the size of the lake and then by the number of instructors we can get. So
we prioritize children from the Smoky Lake area, which fills up the classes quickly.” This year,
organizing these lessons was a little more challenging because the Red Cross, which always
provided the report cards and the necessary documentation and licensed the instructors, is no
longer doing that. For the first year, the Lions Club had to work with the Lifesaving Society out of
Edmonton. “We went to the Lifesaving Society to discuss the procedures. The report cards and
the ribbons have changed. Instructors must now be licensed through them, so there was a lot
of change. And we had to find new instructors. The Lifesaving Society has been quite helpful in
supplying the necessary information and getting us started, and in the end, it all worked out.”
The Lions Club used its Facebook page and existing contacts to find instructors. They were
happy to find four instructors. Registration started on July 16, and though the cut-off was 120,
131 children were registered. Unfortunately, on the first day, it rained, it was too cold, and
several children opted out of the lessons, so they were back around the original 120 children.
The lessons are given playfully, as children learn best through play. The rest of the week,
everything went smoothly; everyone could successfully complete their lessons on Friday. Happy
parents and happy children. The more children learn to swim, the more lives can be saved.