The Salmon Arm pool is being used sub-optimally due to a lack of swimming instructors and lifeguards. This is having a negative impact on the lives of young families in our community.
Learning to swim, unlike other recreational activities, has life-and-death implications and therefore is a public safety issue. Drowning is the third leading cause of accidental death in Canada and people who don’t learn to swim as children often never do.
Anyone who has tried to sign their children up for swimming lessons in Salmon Arm knows the sense of panic when the alarm goes off on sign-up morning. Getting your kids into lessons that fit into your schedule feels like winning a lottery. From a user perspective, it is frustrating to see that the pool is often under-utilised when there is so much demand within the community that people are actually travelling to Enderby and Vernon to get their kids into lessons.
Also, the program that used to provide access to the pool for the more disadvantaged members of our community is no longer there. Terrace, Williams Lake, Cranbrook, Port Alberni and many other small cities across B.C. all have programs offering affordable access to recreation facilities. Lessons in Salmon Arm used to be provided through the schools, but now the pool is just opened up to classes and relies on parent volunteers. Any kids who can’t swim have to wear life jackets and receive no instruction.
Safety was a primary reason the city gave for building the downtown underpass. I would argue that bringing back these programs would have far greater safety benefits for far less money, plus there are health benefits associated.
There has been discussion of building a new pool and recreation centre, and whether this happens or not we will see, but one thing that is certain is that if additional funding and focus is not put into program management, these problems will carry over to a new facility. Young families value these programs a great deal and the broad consensus within the community is that we are being under-served. These are changes that can be made now and do not require any new community infrastructure.
Claire Askew
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