Note to the Sunday afternoon flotillas bobbing down the Vedder River: A “personal floatation device” is not that beer cooler in your lap. It’s a CSA-approved life jacket, designed to keep your body afloat even after you’ve lost consciousness.

The BC Day long weekend drew the usual crowds to the Vedder and Chilliwack Rivers. And while there were no casualties, there was little evidence of caution, or that essential ingredient to water safety: Respect.

True, the Vedder is hardly a torrent right now. Hot, dry weather has brought water levels to their lowest point all year.

But it’s hardly a water park either. It is a river that has claimed lives in the past and can, in a heartbeat, do it again.

It is a river that deserves respect, and an appreciation for its power. It can turn a lazy afternoon into tragedy – a weekend of fun into a desperate search.

Earlier this summer The Progress reported on a group that had done all the right things, including wearing life jackets. They were still spilled into the frigid current and scrabbled through the brush until they were eventually found by RCMP and Chilliwack Search and Rescue.

Other incidents have not ended so well.

The drowning death at Cultus Lake on the weekend serves as yet another reminder of how deadly the water can be. Once again a young man overestimated his abilities and underestimated the water’s danger.

There was plenty of evidence of that on the Vedder last weekend. Almost anything that could hold air was being used as a watercraft, including floats that would be more at home in a backyard pool than a river. A sharp rock, or submerged branch and they would become little more than a piece of wet vinyl.

A life jacket won’t guarantee the occupant will get to shore, but it will lessen the chances of being swept into a craggy rock, or caught on the submerged branches that the search and rescue people call “strainers.”

No one is saying to stay in your house with the doors locked blinds drawn.

But if you are going to venture out on the river, treat it with the respect it deserves.

And spare your friends and family the heartache of another drowning death.