A 17-year-old Chinese exchange student is dead after being found unconscious in the water at Alice Lake during a busy Saturday afternoon (July 17).
The unidentified teen was swimming with classmates North Vancouver's Bodwell High School on a field trip with classmates when members of his group found him floating in the late at about 2:30 p.m.
Hundreds of other visitors and locals were also enjoying the popular provincial park, and crowds gathered at lakeside as the teen was retrieved from the water.
According to reports, the student was given first aid immediately upon being pulled from the water, and BC Ambulance was soon the scene.
Beachgoers were dispersed before a medivac helicopter landed on the beach and transported the teen, clinging to life, to BC Children's Hospital.
He was pronounced dead early Sunday morning as the youth's mother, who happened to be in the country visiting her son, sat by his side.
Kate Robertson, a Vancouverite spending the weekend in Squamish on a work retreat, was about 100 metres from the scene on the beach adjacent to the main beach where the incident happened.
"It was almost eerie because everyone was swimming, laughing and having a good time," she said. "There wasn't a lot of commotion or anything, we didn't even notice and probably wouldn't have until we heard the sirens and then they cleared everyone off the beach."
Speaking to CBC Radio News Monday morning, administrators said classes had been suspended for the day as students met with counsellors to deal with the shock.
The tragedy occurred on the first day of National Drowning Prevention Week, and follows numerous drownings across Canada over the past month, including nearly a dozen deaths involving teens or children.
Last week in B.C. in alone, four people lost their lives to drowning, including one toddler who fell into Okanagan Lake.
The incident also adds to a new study released by the Lifesaving Society showing ethnic groups and newcomers to Canada are at a higher risk of drowning.
The Ipsos Reid found that "new Canadians" from Chinese, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Muslim communities are four times more likely to be unable to swim than those born in Canada.
It's not the first time an exchange student has lost his life while swimming in the lake. In Aug. 1999, 23-year-old Korean exchange student Sang Yoon Bae drowned as he attempted to swim to the floating dock from the beach. RCMP described him as an inexperienced swimmer.
There have been two other drownings in Alice Lake in recent history, including the Aug. 1998 death of 22-year-old Allen Yan of Vancouver and the Aug. 2003 death of a 21-year-old man from the Lower Mainland, whose name was withheld.
