Swimming Pool

There is something about a pool and the summer that go hand in hand. We strive to have our pool open for the longest it can be during the season, and certainly for the popular weeks between July 1 and Labour Day in September. This isn’t always possible and often people want to know why. First of all, the size of our pool is such that it is subject to community by-laws, including water quality and qualified lifeguard supervision. Water quality and clarity is judged by a municipal health inspector before the pool can open. Getting lifeguards was always a challenge, but since Covid this has become a real hardship, for not only our community but also communities across North America. Further, again due to municipal by-laws, when our “Class B” pool has over 30 people within the swimming fence we must have two on-duty lifeguards.

Many parks facing these same challenges have chosen to either replace their one large pool with two smaller pools, or augment their large pool with a second smaller pool. In times with no lifeguards available at those parks, the larger pool is closed while the smaller pool remains open, albeit unsupervised. Pools that are small enough are not subject to either set of regulations and therefore are easier to open, and keep open. Of course, this has some other implications including that it is unsafe to send children to an unsupervised pool, and many of our members have become accustomed to sending their children to our pool, comforted in the knowledge that if it is open then it is also supervised.

There will be other issues that surface when we have a pool or pools that may be open without qualified lifeguard supervision. From a safety and member convenience perspective we may look at hours of both supervision and no supervision at a smaller pool.