Men accounted for 77% of drowning deaths in B.C. last year, coroner says

Of the nearly 100 drowning deaths in B.C. last year, 77 per cent were men, according to a report from the B.C. Coroners Service.

This information comes just a few weeks after the drowning death of 27-year-old international student Jatin Garg in Kamloops, B.C., who died after he went into the Thompson River to retrieve a volleyball in early July.

Only a few weeks prior to Garg's death, a 29-year-old Burnaby man drowned in Cabin Lake, in Cypress Provincial Park. According to police, he had been swimming across the lake with his fiancée when suddenly he started to struggle.

"This is something that is preventable, and that makes it even more tragic," said Lenea Grace, the Lifesaving Society's executive director for B.C. and Yukon.

Grace said 2024 was not unusual, as men often ma