TIME TO POOL RESOURCES

As a coastal city with the best weather in Canada, Vancouver should be a swimmers’ mecca. But it turns out that the city has fewer outdoor swimming pools than other major cities.

In fact, there are only three — Kitsilano, Second Beach and New Brighton — excluding the shallow splash pools at Maple Grove Park and Hillcrest Community Centre. That works out to one pool per 200,000 people. Add in Vancouver’s nine indoor pools and it amounts to one per 50,500. Montreal has three times more public pools per capita.

It’s not a lack of demand. Vancouver’s pools recorded 2.6 million visits last year, or more than four per resident.

Vancouver Park Board chair Sarah KirbyYung acknowledges that the city is underserved and, in a recent interview, stressed the importance of swimming as a life skill.

Of course, the hardy and headstrong might argue that with thousands of kilometres of ocean at our doorstep, the need for public pools is not as great as other cities.

But open-water swimming is not for everyone. Sea water is cold north of the 49th parallel and a wetsuit is recommended. And be prepared for waves, currents, debris and marine flora and fauna. You should have a buddy for open-water swimming. You don’t need one to do laps in a pool.

An obvious solution to the problem is additional pools, but that’s expensive. Replacing the aged Vancouver Aquatic Centre, for example, could cost $50 million.

The city has launched a 10-month consultation on the future of Vancouver’s aquatic facilities to better ascertain what the needs are and how best to address them.

One promising proposal is a pop-up pool, basically a container filled with water, that can be installed in-ground or above ground at a fraction of the cost of a permanent pool. The 10-by20 metre pop-up pool at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, for example, cost $1 million.

Swimming pools may not have the priority of more pressing city issues, but they do add to livability — and as Kirby-Yung hinted, everyone should learn to swim. The park board should make every effort to provide at least one more pool for the summer of 2017.