Heather Wright/The Independent

A Lambton Shores politician is praising the life guard crew after saving 32 people struggling in Lake Huron on Canada Day.

Glenn Bailee, who represents Grand Bend on Lambton Shores council, says the combination of incredibly hot weather, a statutory holiday in the middle of the week, all kinds of people using personal watercraft plus a major thunderstorm, could have resulted in “mayhem” on July 1. “The fact that there wasn’t is remarkable – it’s absolutely remarkable.”

Although there was no official number on how many people were in the community, Bailee says a “significant blast of humanity” came to Grand Bend with the super hot Canada Day. About 20 to 25 life guards work for the municipality and on holidays, they patrol the beach on foot or watch the action in Lake Huron from beach chairs from 11 am to 7 pm.

Bailee says the lifeguards are each assigned a stretch of the beach to watch and are trained to watch and step in when people’s heads dip below the water. They went to the aid of 32 people on Canada Day. In the middle of that very busy day, the beach had to be cleared as a storm rolled in.

Bailee says the lifeguards took it all in stride.

“They’re a fabulous, and there’s continuity. I think they’re understaffed at this point. I think they could use another two full timers,

“The more you pay attention to the way they work the beach, the more remarkable it is, I can’t say enough. I absolutely cannot say enough about how they’ve developed over the course of the 20 years I’ve watched them,” Bailee said.

“I used to be all thinking about the lifeguards as having a slack job, but not anymore. I used to think that, ‘oh yeah, bunch of bros;’ but oh my goodness gracious, the stresses that they have on a shift are beyond compare, beyond anything you’d ever expect.”