As you have no doubt observed, this year we are experiencing a high incidence of swim cancellations due to the inability of pool operators to provide the required complement of lifeguards for our events. In many cases, we are advised of the cancellation only a day or two prior to the event.
We are holding discussions with pool providers in an ongoing effort to mitigate these cancellations.
We have been informed that we are not alone in this experience – all groups renting pools are being affected by the lifeguard shortage and there are many cancellations.
The shortage results largely from lifeguard training having been suspended for a couple of years during the COVID pandemic. While training has resumed, many of those newly entering the program are still too young to be assigned to our events and many older lifeguards have aged out of the program.
A further obstacle is the timing of our events which occur late on Friday and Saturday evenings. Not only is this prime party time for the demographic to which the lifeguards belong but is also a period during which public transportation service – on which many of the lifeguards rely – is less than optimal.
We have also learned that many lifeguards feel uncomfortable working our swims. This is a marked change from past experience when we were often told by lifeguards that they enjoyed working our events – supervising a group of well-behaved adults was far less stressful than managing a horde of unruly kids. Perhaps this unease stems from a general public misconception of naturism. Unfortunately, as many older lifeguards have left the program, the new lifeguards have few colleagues with experience working our events who could dispel their misconceptions.
Thus lifeguards have a large number of work assignments from which to choose – many of which they view to be more desirable than our events.
We have been considering several avenues to deal with the situation.
- Changing swims to another day does not seem to be a viable solution as late evening weekday swims would likely not be attractive to a large number of ON/NO members and may suffer from many of the same issues we are currently facing.
- It has been suggested that we try holding swims at pools located closer to the universities as many lifeguards live near these institutions.
- The city is open to ON/NO recruiting certified lifeguards directly. If you or someone you know has been certified as a lifeguard and would be willing to serve as a lifeguard at swims, please let us know by sending the information to pool@onno.ca.
You can also send any other ideas or comments you have on this matter to the above address.
In the meantime, we will keep our fingers crossed that the upcoming swim will go ahead.