Two volunteers receive royal acknowledgments

Today, His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent delivered a special edition of the Royal Lifesaving Society Commonwealth’s Certificate of Merit to celebrate its 125th anniversary and recognize the outstanding involvement of 125 volunteers.  

Among the 125 recipients from everywhere around the world were Richard Huint and Yanick Graveline, two of our very own volunteers who have had a significant impact on the Quebec lifesaving community.

Richard Huint has invested a considerable amount of time and energy into lifesaving; the Lifesaving Society benefited from his expertise for 22 years. Not only was he a devoted evaluator for numerous National Lifeguard exams, he also worked tirelessly on updating the NL program and trained countless lifeguards in the pool and waterpark options. It is incidentally thanks to him that the Society created the waterpark option for the NL program! He collaborated on the creation, adaptation and revision of a number of publications on lifesaving, including the Alert: Lifeguarding in action manual. He worked in close cooperation with Dr. Frank Pia, who identified 3 factors that increase chances of drowning in supervised areas (R.I.D.), and spared no efforts in raising awareness about this concept among the community.

Past National President of the Lifesaving Society Canada and current member of the International Life Saving Federation – Americas’ board of directors, Yanick Graveline also sat on the Quebec Branch’s board for more than ten years. But do not go thinking his 20 years of volunteer commitment were limited to that! He was actively involved as instructor and evaluator for various courses, including the National Lifeguard course, and allowed the lifesaving community to benefit from his expertise and extensive knowledge by being technical advisor.  Additionally, he was part of the Society’s boating safety patrol to ensure water safety during boating events from 1997 to 2000, and, during 6 years, participated to lifesaving sport as an athlete, coach, official and organizer for multiple provincial championships.

The Lifesaving Society sincerely thanks the extraordinary commitment of its volunteers, whose relentless work brings us closer to our common goal – a province free of drowning.