Skip to content

Letter to the editor: The importance of Dease Pool

This is to let you know why Dease Pool is important.
letters_to_the_editor_309x245
Letters to the editor

To the editor:

This is to let you know why Dease Pool is important.

The pool provides relief from the heat for both children and adults.

It keeps children occupied and happy.

After our long winter, it becomes a hub for neighbours to get acquainted or reacquainted. In my family alone there are four living generations. The youngest is just ready to start swimming.

With the current opioid crisis in Thunder Bay, it is more important than ever to provide our children with every possible advantage to grow up happy, healthy and have a feeling of community. The latter is very important.

Gangs are usually made up of people who are looking for a place to belong.

To close the pool is a slap in the face to the community and a message to the children that they don’t matter to city hall.

Now for the excuses: It will cost too much. You have been presented with a plan that shows that the pool can be refurbished for much less than your estimate. Even if you were right, how much is a child worth?

It doesn’t get enough use. I don’t think operating costs would be any less with more users. I don’t know what the numbers are, but aren’t 200 humans just as worthy as 2,000?

To use Widnall Pool, there are too many busy streets to cross and the pool is at capacity already. The pool is heated and not everyone likes that. Most kids who use Dease Pool can walk there. If they take their bikes they are pretty safe because people know each other. When you ride a bike in Thunder Bay it is only safe while you are riding it. The minute you turn your back it gets stolen. Thunder Bay is not the safe place it was when you were a child.

Parents don’t want their kids too far from home.

Washrooms have also been presented as an issue. All they need is a toilet and a place to wash their hands. Nobody cares whether the water is hot or cold. In any case, Kateri has it covered in her study.

Knowing that people were going to object to this closing, the operating costs for the pool should have been put aside for next year, rather than being given to another neighbourhood.

I am asking that you reconsider your decision to close the pool. It’s important to the people who use it. This includes people with mobility issues who can’t get other forms of exercise. There is no shame in changing your mind when presented with other options. Saving the pool would make this council heroes.

Letting it die will see it go down in history as the council with a Grinchy heart.

Pat Moore,
Thunder Bay

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks