Safety first! That was the message that Martin Lesperance brought to the people of Coronach on December 7.
SaskPower hired Lesperance to Coronach to speak to their employees at the Poplar River Power Station and sent him speak to students at the Coronach School.
Lesperance, with Safety Health Publishing, spoke to the power station employees in the early morning and to the high school student right before lunch. He was back after the lunch break to speak to the younger children.
Lesperance normally speaks to corporate groups but was very happy to get a chance to speak to the students.
“First of all, I could thank SaskPower for bringing me in because it is not too often you get to spread this message to the high schools. It is mostly just the companies. But it is great with them seeing the need to bring me into the schools too. I would like to thank them for that.”
Lesperance talked to everyone about thinking first, in every aspect of your life.
“The main message would be to sum it up stop and think of the repercussions of their actions. You know if you stop and think about whatever your going to be doing whether it is driving or if you are going to be working in a potentially dangerous area or whatever. . . Stop and think about what could happen.” Lesperance encouraged the students to think their actions through to avoid unnecessary injuries.
Lesperance dedicated a large portion of his address to the potential for accidents when alcohol is involved, whether it is driving cars, or attending parties.
Lesperance, who worked in emergency rescue, said, “Drinking and driving is just one of the ways people get injured. I have attended people who have been seriously injured or killed for drinking and driving their cars, their snow mobiles or ATV, using chainsaws, drinking using guns, drinking and walking as I said in the talk drinking and talking too much to the wrong person.”
Lesperance travels from Alaska to Mississippi, speaking to many types of companies about safety in the workplace and at home.
Barbara Kessler, who works for SaskPower, accompanied Lesperance to the school for his address.
“We brought in Martin Lesperance to talk to our staff and our school kids. Safety is not just about on -the-job worksite safety, it is about at home as well. You spend time at home playing and working at home and we want, as an employer, people coming back to work safe.
We also want to send them home from work safe so they can enjoy their family life. I just remember that safety is an all time job, every time, no matter whether you are playing on the ice, hockey or working at work or doing things at home with your kids.”
Kessler hoped that the school children would carry home the message of safety. “We hope that our kids can help remind us what we should do safely and that we can be good role models to them to be safe.
Grade 10 student, Alex Berthelot, was in attendance. Alex talked about the presentation. “He told us the effects of not thinking about the outcome of events. He told us about his experiences as being a fire fighter and working on an ambulance. He showed us pictures of how easily a car crash can happen even while driving slow.” said Alex.
“I think this was a great presentation, because it taught us that even driving the speed limit, you can hit the ice and get ejected out of your vehicle, that results in serious injury or even death if you do not wear our seat belt. It just reminded us that even though a seatbelt is a little thing, it could save our life in an accident.”
“We have had a couple presentations about safety. I think it is good we have more then one so we always have a constant reminder of the dangers of not thinking about the consequences to our actions.” said Alex.
