This summer is the third in a row that Mount Forest residents have been without a public pool.
I don’t live in Mount Forest, but I feel the pain of residents.
The Lion Roy Grant Community Pool closed before the 2022 season, after council voted unanimously not to spend the estimated $200,000 needed to repair the pool and get it open.
The money was allocated toward a new pool, about which discussions had already been happening for years.
At one time, repairing and updating the existing pool was still considered an option. The current council no longer sees it as one.
Land has been purchased, design consultants hired and design options presented to the community, all for a new pool at a new location – and all before failed inspections and a state of disrepair led to the decision not to open the pool in the 2022 season.
Fast forward to the 2024 season and as council has been moving forward on the process of decommissioning the still-closed Lion Roy Grant pool, residents are coming out of the woodwork to ask council to backtrack.
Central to this discussion is the estimated cost – some $5.5 million – to build a brand new outdoor pool.
Some think this is just too much money to spend, period. Others think council should have taken more time to thoroughly investigate the cost of renovating the existing facility.
There is also a less vocal group of citizens who support the idea of the new pool, whatever the cost. Some may prefer to wait longer – and inevitably spend more – for an indoor, year-round facility. The issue is not black and white, but seems to be coloured any number of rippling shades of turquoise, blue and aquamarine.
It’s the people who favour not spending the money on any pool at all with whom I take issue most. Public pools are important. And outdoor pools are a special class of pool.
I am happy to say I count myself among the countless number of people who took swimming lessons at the old Fergus pool – the outdoor one on St. David Street. I’m still sad that it no longer exists. That pool was built in response to a drowning, so that kids would learn to swim, and so people would have a safer alternative to swimming in the river.
That is the value of a public pool. Kids (and probably some adults, too) learn to swim. And they learn about water safety. And they do so in an environment that is clean and guarded.
These things are the primary value of a public pool, but there are also other benefits – some I associate more with an outdoor pool.
It’s a place to cool off in the heat of summer. It’s a place to gather with friends. It provides active summer recreation. It’s a place to meet neighbours.
My father, who learned to swim in the Fergus pool and eventually served as a lifeguard there, would say more people went through its doors in the few months of summer than in an entire year at the current indoor pool.
There may be multiple reasons for this, but at least part of it is because an outdoor pool provides outdoor summer recreation; whereas an indoor pool does not.
Either way, the benefits public pools provide are especially important for those people who fall into a demographic that could never afford a backyard pool, a cottage or an all-inclusive vacation. These are likely the same people who cannot afford to make the trip from Mount Forest to Arthur for lessons in the nearest public pool. They need a pool in their neighbourhood. In their town.
And for three summers, they have been without one.
It’s not clear how long it will take to raise the funds for a new build, but I suspect the town will be without a pool much longer than they think.
After a staff report to Wellington North council asserted that the average lifespan of an outdoor municipal pool is 28 years, I did some research.
Firstly, I learned that the Statistics Canada report that was referenced actually said something a little different.
It referred specifically to pools built in 2016 – the year municipalities were surveyed about their recreation infrastructure – and said the life expectancy of those pools was 29 years.
Meanwhile, I can name quite a number of outdoor municipal pools, built before that time that lasted a lot longer – the Fergus and Mount Forest pools among them, as well as many that remain open. But in searching for history of public pools, I found a common theme: the years, and in some cases decades, it took to fundraise enough money to build pools.
I also found a story out of Hamilton, where residents fought to save their existing outdoor pool. The old pool closed for renovations in November 2020, and the new Parkdale pool opened in the same spot in July of 2022.
According to a Hamilton Spectator story, the new accessible facility cost $3.2 million and took a year to complete. The community was just one season without its pool.
Meanwhile, I worry that Wellington North council’s decision not to save what they have will mean a generation of residents will grow up without a pool.
It’s the kids who are missing out the most in this debate. The ways they would benefit from a local pool are something you can’t put a dollar value on.
