Lifesaving Society Manitoba

The Lifesaving Society has a long and proud history of teaching lifesaving to Canadians.We trace our roots to the late 19th century in London, England where we began as The Swimmer’s Life Saving Society.

In 1894, Arthur Lewis Cochrane brought to Canada the lifesaving skills he learned in his homeland, and he passed them along to students at Upper Canada College in Toronto, Ontario.

In June 1896, eighteen of his students were the first recipients of our distinguished Bronze Medallion award, the first award created by the Society. Under the patronage of King Edward VII in 1904, we became The Royal Life Saving Society.

In the 1950s, we were the first Canadian organization to adopt mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing as the method of choice over manual methods of artificial respiration.

We started our first CPR training program in the 1960s. In the 1980s, we initiated a project to design an economical CPR training mannequin now known as ACTAR 911®.

Founded in 1911, Lifesaving Society Manitoba has been proudly saving lives and educating Manitobans about water safety for over 110 years. We train all of Manitoba’s National Lifeguards.

On April 19, 1911, over forty participants attended a meeting in Winnipeg with the objective of forming a Manitoba Branch of the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS). Many of them held lifesaving awards from other countries and had been teaching classes in Winnipeg for some years.

Five months later, the Branch was officially inaugurated on September 6th, 1911, with a full slate of officers elected under the leadership of President J. A. Aikens, Esq., M.P.