Bridging Troubled Waters: Examining Culture in the Canadian Red Cross' Swimming and Water Safety Program

Abstract

The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) offers its Swimming and Water Safety Program throughout Canada. The program is delivered by over 35 000 active instructors to over one million participants every year. The research in this thesis is part of a collaborative, interdisciplinary project in partnership with the CRC that examined ways to improve programming for cultural and ethnic minority populations. The thesis is written in the stand alone paper format. The first paper evaluates the program’s content, through a critical whiteness lens, to identify obstacles to offering effective programming to people of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Based on these findings, I created and piloted a cultural safety training module for program instructors. The second paper then evaluates the effectiveness of this training module to provide recommendations for the CRC to optimize its management of diversity within its organization and aquatics facilities across the country. Collectively, this thesis bridges both understandings of Eurocanadian and whiteness discourses as well as critical whiteness and organizational theories to more holistically understand processes of inclusion, exclusion, accommodation, and the management of diversity in the context of a nation-wide Canadian sport and recreation program.