Community members will have a chance to bid a final farewell to Canada Games Pool before its doors close for good.
The City of New Westminster is hosting a Farewell to Canada Games Pool event that allows guests to register for a 15-minute walk-through of the facility on Saturday, Feb. 12.
Community members who register to attend the event will be able to take photos and collect mementos such as small rubber duckies with the original CGP logo, fridge magnets and postcards featuring water colour images of the pool exterior.
A “memory walk” will include a photo booth with a popular pool feature as the backdrop and a chance to participate in a special community art project. Families will also be able to take home Canada Games Pool-themed craft kits for children.
“After our difficult decision to decommission and close Canada Games Pool in November of last year, we’re happy to be able to give the community an opportunity to say goodbye to this facility before looking forward to the new təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre currently under construction,” Mayor Jonathan Cote said in a news release. “I invite everyone who has fond ties to the pool to come and take one last walk down memory lane.”
Canada Games Pool, which officially opened in 1973, was initially built to host the 1973 Canada Summer Games. At that time, the Olympic-standard swimming and diving pool was one of the largest in the country.
“We appreciate the significance this facility has in our community and throughout the region,” said Dean Gibson, the city’s director of parks and recreation. “We hope this chance to walk through the Canada Games Pool one last time will help provide a sense of closure as we say goodbye to a piece of New Westminster history and look forward to creating new memories at our future aquatics and community centre.”
For the past several years the city has been working on plans to build a new aquatic and community centre facility, which will replace Canada Games Pool and Centennial Community Centre. Canada Games Pool was scheduled to be decommissioned in August 2023, when construction of the new təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre was complete on the adjacent site.
After closing for its routine maintenance shutdown at the beginning of September 2021, the pool’s reopening was delayed by a couple of days because of flooding in a vault that houses mechanical equipment. Soon after reopening, Canada Games Pool had to close again after a deficiency in the drainage system (that had recently been relocated to accommodate the new facility’s construction), was determined to be the cause of flooding in critical mechanical areas of the pool.
The future of the facility tanked when a leak was discovered in the pool’s main tank and the city determined there would be “significant costs” and an eight-month timeline needed to complete the repairs.
“The decision to close Canada Games Pool permanently was an incredibly difficult decision for city council to make. While we knew this facility would close in the near future, these certainly aren’t the circumstances in which we wanted to say goodbye,” Cote said in a press release announcing the permanent closure of the pool. “Canada Games Pool is a fixture in our city and has served our community and region for almost 50 years. The legacy of Canada Games Pool will always live on through the many fond memories our community holds of their time at this beloved facility.”
Community members wanting to register for the Farewell to Canada Games Pool event can go to at newwestcity.ca/cgp or call 604-777-5100. Fifteen-minute time slots are available on Saturday, Feb. 12 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
“We are expecting this to be a very popular event and stress the importance of pre-registering to ensure access on the day,” Gibson said.
The city notes that decommissioning work on the facility has already begun, so there will be no water in the pool at the Farewell to Canada Games Pool event.
