The incident is the first fatality to have been reported at the park in its 24-year history, officials said.The incident is the first fatality to have been reported at the park in its 24-year history, officials said. (CBC)

A nine-year-old boy has drowned at a Quebec aquatic park, provincial police say.

The incident happened at the Mont Saint-Sauveur water park in the Laurentian region Wednesday afternoon.

The boy's lifeless body was pulled out of the park's wave pool.

"When the people that were in the pool started yelling, the lifeguard jumped right in," said Quebec provincial police Sgt. Benoît Richard. "[He] took the young boy out of the water, started doing CPR."

The boy was taken to hospital in nearby Saint-Jerôme at about 3:15 p.m. and his death was confirmed about 45 minutes later, Richard said.

"Everyone was calm, the lifeguards, I think they did what they had to do," said one witness. "The security was there and the police arrived not long afterwards."

The drowning was the first fatality reported at the water park in its 24-year history, said Mont Saint-Sauveur's director of customer service, Christian Dufour.

"The water park was operating at around 15 to 25 per cent of its normal capacity," said Dufour.

The park remained open following the incident, though police ordered that the wave pool be kept closed.

A coroner's investigation has been launched to determine the circumstances surrounding the death.

The boy was among a group of children from a school in Laval who had been on field trip to celebrate the last day of school.

The French-language Laval school board is preparing a crisis team to help his classmates deal with the tragedy, police said.