The Vancouver Aquatic Centre’s closure has left North Shore clubs with no long-course pools
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Baylee Munro takes over next week as head coach of one of the North Shore’s largest competitive swim clubs, and already he’s coaching around a problem: His swimmers have no 50-metre pool to train in.
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“Since the Vancouver Aquatic Centre closed, we have no access to 50-metre training,” said Munro, whose Chena Swim Club counts about 150 competitive swimmers. “As it currently stands, we have no long-course access.”
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That gap has opened just as North Vancouver celebrates a major upgrade to its aquatic facilities. The new Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre opened this summer, and when its pool follows this fall it will offer a lazy river, a leisure pool and close to 70 per cent more water than the building it replaced. What it won’t have is a lane longer than 25 metres.
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Competitive swimming is split between two pool lengths. Short-course races run in 25-metre pools; long-course, the Olympic standard, runs in 50. Munro said the meets that matter most — the Canadian Open, the Olympic trials — are all long course, and a swimmer can only qualify for them with a time set in a 50-metre pool.
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“Even if you’re the fastest short-course swimmer in the world, you couldn’t qualify unless you had a long-course time,” he said.
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The new Harry Jerome was never going to change that. A 50-metre pool was part of the facility’s original 2018 design, but the City of North Vancouver pared it back to 25 metres in 2020 as it worked to hold down the project’s cost.
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For years, Chena’s swimmers made up the difference by crossing the bridge to the Vancouver Aquatic Centre downtown, training there twice a week, Munro said. That pool — the region’s busiest 50-metre tank — closed at the end of June, and the city plans to replace it with one-half the length. A group of Vancouver swimmers took the city to B.C. Supreme Court to try to block the downsizing.
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The City of Vancouver’s only other indoor 50-metre pool, at Hillcrest, is overcapacity, swimmers argue, as is the one at the University of B.C.
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Getting time at those pools is hard, Munro said. Each is run by its own recreation commission, and an outside club like Chena sits low on the priority list for space.
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Even when time is available, he said, it’s rarely the after-school hours a kids’ club needs — and the drive to UBC or Hillcrest can run about 45 minutes each way, a stretch for coaches running back-to-back practices and for families already shuttling between pools.
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Swimming Canada, the sport’s national body, raised alarms last year about closures of 50-metre pools across the country, including Vancouver’s, saying Canada’s “aquatic facility crisis” is jeopardizing the country’s ability to produce competitive swimmers.
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The City of North Vancouver said it recognizes the desire for closer access to a 50-metre pool, but that it built Harry Jerome for the community as a whole.
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“Cities like ours and many others throughout the Lower Mainland have to balance providing swimming amenities that serve the general population … with the needs of athletes who are looking for competitive sport facilities,” the city said in a statement.
