Canada’s diverse landscape offers an extraordinary environment and wealth of opportunities for a wide variety of age groups to pursue outdoor recreational activities of all kinds – year round.
While many Canadians take advantage of our great outdoors, sadly there are approximately 10,000 incidents annually in Canada.  The majority are marine related (6,000 alone in oceans and Great Lakes), with a break down of 1,000 in aeronautical, over 2,000 in ground search and rescue and 800 humanitarians. These incidents involve people who have reportedly run into trouble while participating in outdoor activities.  Unfortunately, the number of SAR incidents across Canada is increasing at an alarming rate annually.

And for those of you on the West Coast, take note: there are approximately 1000 SAR incidents in BC each year, which is more than the total number of humanitarian incidents for the rest of Canada combined!

The BC Provincial Emergency Program originally created the AdventureSmart program to address this growing concern. AdventureSmart focuses on delivering a variety of programs to educate outdoors enthusiasts, ranging from kids to adults, about potential risks and effective risk management strategies to employ when participating in outdoor activities. From its successful beginnings in British Columbia, AdventureSmart gained incredible momentum and has now become a national program.

Through education, literature, and simple word of mouth, the AdventureSmart program aims to convey one simple message to outdoor adventure seekers: “Get informed and go outdoors”!

Are you AdventureSmart?