Absence of life jackets a deadly constant in Quebec drowning statistics

As a Quebec coroner was assigned Friday to investigate the drowning death Thursday of an 18-year-old kayaker on Lac St-Louis — the latest in a series of drownings that have made headlines over the past two weeks — public attention has been refocused on the issue of water safety in Quebec.
But statistics compiled on drowning deaths in this province possess one deadly constant: in 80 per cent of cases the victim wasn’t wearing a life jacket.
According to numbers compiled between