By any measure, Vancouver was already lacking outdoor public pools before it was announced the aging and frequently-under-repair Kitsilano Pool would not open at all this year.
No Kits means Vancouver has only two swimmable outdoor pools: Second Beach in Stanley Park and New Brighton in the northeast corner of the city.
By comparison, Montreal has 63 outdoor pools, Toronto, 58. During a recent heat dome, both cities announced extended hours at some of those facilities to give people a place to cool off.
Regina, with a third of Vancouver’s population, has five outdoor pools.
Vancouver used to have more outdoor pools dotted across the city. Unfancy, rectangular tanks in neighbourhoods like Sunset, Hastings-Sunrise and Marpole that were decommissioned at the end of their lifespans and not replaced.
Mount Pleasant also had an outdoor pool that, by all accounts, was a busy summer hub for 42 years, right up to 2009 when it was demolished.
Mount Pleasant Pool promise
A replacement pool was promised based on public consultations that overwhelmingly identified it as the top priority in the Mount Pleasant Park redesign, and the park board of the day pledged to build it when funds became available.
Fast-forward 15 years, and the land set aside to fulfil that promise remains an empty expanse of patchy grass.
Meanwhile, as longtime pool advocate Marjory Duda points out, the population of the city and neighbourhood have exploded.
“If we had built this back when it was in the draft capital plan several years ago, we could have built five more of them for what it costs today,” said Duda, a Mount Pleasant Community Association board member.
“And now that we’re down to only two outdoor swimming pools in Vancouver, I think somebody needs to step up and deliver on this before the other two outdoor pools fail.”
The Mount Pleasant pool saga speaks to the dissonance between Vancouver’s two elected bodies: park board and city council.
Park board politicians are responsible for planning and delivering parks and recreation services. But it’s the politicians on city council that have the hammer, so to speak, with the final say on funding infrastructure.
Park boards have repeatedly tried to push the Mount Pleasant pool forward over the years, most recently in 2022, when commissioners voted unanimously to reallocate $11.5 million in funding to finally build the thing.
However, the next day, city council voted against it, influenced partly by a “stop the pool” petition started by people who prefer lawn in the park.
Current park board chair Brennan Bastyovanszky agrees that Vancouver needs more outdoor pools.
“We understand the demands and needs of having outdoor pools,” he said. “The city has not put money behind it, and we don’t control the purse strings. We’re advocating for funding, but the city just hasn’t seen the value.”
Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung was a champion for full-size, neighbourhood outdoor pools when she served on the park board from 2014 to 2018, even advocating for a policy of “quick starts” to address the city’s pool shortage.
But in 2022, she was in the majority of city councillors who voted against funding the construction of a pool in Mount Pleasant.
Vancouver’s largest outdoor pool is badly leaking and susceptible to further damage from storms, a city staff report says.
Speaking to CBC News, Kirby-Yung said the Mount Pleasant community is served by Hillcrest Pool, a busy indoor facility with a small outdoor wading pool, located a 25-minute walk from Mount Pleasant Park.
According to Kirby-Yung, the need for outdoor pools in Vancouver is different from that in other large cities.
“I think Vancouver has the benefit, unlike a place like Montreal, of being surrounded by ocean, so we have that option in addition to pools,” she said.
Marpole outdoor pool promise
In 2019, VanSplash, a report on Vancouver’s aquatics facilities that was three years in the making, recommended that the Mount Pleasant outdoor pool get built, along with another full-sized facility in the under-served Marpole area of South Vancouver.
An outdoor pool did figure prominently in design renderings for the new Marpole Community Centre. However, because of escalating budgets, it was deferred to a second phase of construction, with the first phase slated for completion in 2026.
In an email, the City of Vancouver said the expected delivery date of the new Marpole pool is now unknown.
“There is currently no funding source available or identified. The pool would need to be included in future capital plan requests,” it said.
Mike Burdick, president of the Marpole-Oakridge Community Association, said the community deserves a clear timeline for the pool project.
“Does [deferred] mean in a year or two years, 100 years? Nobody knows, and nobody will tell you, of course,” said Burdick.
“When they put out those renderings and get all that publicity about what they’re going to do, then all I want is for them to do it. Don’t promise it and then not do it because that’s not right.”
According to Duda, the next opportunity to secure funding for the Mount Pleasant outdoor pool isn’t until the 2031-2035 capital plan, meaning at least another decade before it could possibly be built.
“Somebody needs to step up, recognize all of the community input that has happened over these many years, and deliver on this very ordinary commitment,” she said.