One of the last old-style, traditional outdoor public pools on Vancouver Island closes for the winter next week.
The question: Will it ever reopen?
Rumour says no, but the University of Victoria, which owns the Ian Stewart Complex on Gordon Head Road, says its fate has yet to be decided.
Cynthia Reid is among a group of regular users who think the half-century-old pool merits preservation, if not by the university, then by the municipality of Saanich.
“It’s a gem that many have long forgotten about,” says the 54-year-old nurse. She grew up in Saanich, learning to swim at both the quirky little Pacific Swim School tank on Pear off Shelbourne (a pho restaurant sits there now) and the six-lane pool in the complex that some still refer to as the Racquet Club. She dips into the latter three or four times a week.
“It’s such a pleasure to swim in an outdoor pool,” Reid says. “From swimming in the fog, to the rain, to a perfect sunny day — it’s always a different experience.”
Different, but disappearing.
Most of B.C.’s outdoor municipal pools were built in the 1950s and ’60s. You’ll find them in beautifully treed parks of similar vintage. Nanaimo has one in Bowen Park. Courtenay’s Memorial Outdoor Pool is by the Puntledge River, close to downtown. Campbell River’s Centennial Pool is in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. Norman Rockwell could have painted it.
For many, the outdoor public pool is evocative of idyllic, endless summers (like the one we just had). The smell was intoxicating, a rich blend of mown lawn, chlorine and steaming concrete. “Did you go in the deep end?” was not so much a question as a dare. The high board offered a challenge of testicle-retracting magnitude.
But municipalities began to shift to indoor pools in a big way in the 1970s, when the federal and provincial governments were splashing money around. Indoor pools make sense. They can be used year-round and after dark. It doesn’t rain or snow, and nobody gets sunburned.
Gradually, the outdoor pools were drained. There’s the odd one attached to a hotel where non-guests can still pay for a plunge, as is the case at Bear Mountain, but other opportunities for the public are rare.
The Ian Stewart pool was part of the package when UVic bought the Racquet Club complex for $4.6 million in 1991, buying it from St. Michaels University School, which had been bleeding money since acquiring the facility four years previous. UVic, eager for more recreational facilities for students, turned to the Racquet Club after dreams of building a new gym in time for the 1994 Commonwealth Games turned to dust.
The 1991 sale didn’t sit well with the private club’s more than 1,000 members, many of them tennis players. UVic responded by saying members of the community would have limited access depending on the university’s needs.
Today, the future of the whole complex — it also houses some university offices, an ice rink, a dance studio, cardio and weight rooms, and tennis, squash and racquetball courts — is uncertain as the university prepares to open the $77-million Centre for Athletics, Recreation and Special Abilities — CARSA — in the spring. The ice rink will stay, but a decision on what to do with the rest of the Ian Stewart building and site is subject to a consultant’s analysis.
Swimmers are anxious about the fate of the pool, which will close for its annual hibernation Oct. 10.
All pools are costly to run, and UVic can well argue that doubling as a municipal rec centre doesn’t fit with its core mission of fostering academic excellence.
Reid counters that the public pumps a lot of taxes into the university, so it would be nice to get a little in return.
She also sees a role for the municipality. “Maybe Saanich could buy in,” she says. “Why get rid of a good recreation complex, or at least aspects of it, when we need to be fit?”
It works elsewhere, she notes. “You look at the success of some of the outdoor pools in Vancouver. They’re glorious.”
