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Latest — Jun 3, 2026

June 3, 2026: NASA Go Fever

Greetings, We've made it to June. We are one month away from the start of Q3 (July-August-September). Although we don't deliver public shareholder earnings, I find the Q1-Q2-Q3-Q4 business & finance system more useful than semesters/sessions (when I programmed swim lessons as a pool manager)

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May 27, 2026: Mayor of Vancouver wants free swim lessons

Greetings & Happy Wednesday, Ken Sim, the mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, would like the city to offer free swim lessons. You can read the meeting minutes from the May 20, 2026 Council meeting here. I want to start by saying that I support the idea of free or heavily-subsidized

May 21, 2026: Lifeguard Workplace Injuries & Fatalities

Good Afternoon, Two years ago this week, I was at the Atlantic Recreation Facilities Conference (ARFC) in Saint John, New Brunswick presenting on lifeguard workplace injuries & fatalities - yes, fatalities. That presentation is available on our YouTube channel here, in case you haven't seen it. Sadly, it&

May 13, 2026: Collaboration over competition

Greetings, Each week I use the start of the newsletter to talk about something that's interesting to me, and this week is no different, but I have two smaller items rather than one big topic. (1) I had an interaction this week that really highlighted to me that

May 7, 2026: System, skill or choice?

Greetings, I've been spending much of the last week diving deep into Ontario swimming pool regulations and standards. It's been an interesting exercise because it takes me back to my grad school years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where I'd spend hours, sometimes

April 29, 2026: AI & Aquatics

Good Morning & Happy Wednesday! ICYMI, we have a new-ish anonymous advice column for all your burning pool questions that you are too embarrassed to ask. One of the questions I received: I am noticing more and more AI generated content within messaging (not your newsletters) but in full conference

April 24, 2026: Reasonably foreseeable problems

Good Morning & Happy Friday, If you are a new subscriber, the goal is to get the newsletter out on Wednesdays (no specific time) but - as I shared in the audio version of last week's newsletter - we are going through staffing/admin transitions right now, so

April 16, 2026: How is the pool operator qualified?

Greetings, I didn't expect to be talking about chlorine gas again this week (ICYMI April 8, 2026: Chlorine gas in Canmore) but just after last week's newsletter, there was also a chorine gas incident at a swimming pool in British Columbia. Chlorine gas exposure at Victoria

April 8, 2026: Chlorine gas in Canmore

Greetings, I had the opportunity to attend a webinar yesterday about the preliminary findings from the Canmore Inn & Suites incident investigation. My original newsletter about the "mass casualty incident" is available here. The webinar was hosted by the attending public health inspector (PHI) from Alberta Health Services

April 1, 2026: It's not a cost, it's a strategic investment

Greetings! It's the Wednesday before a long weekend for most Canadians, so my inbox has been unusually quiet this week except for a few ongoing projects. I've had some really bad customer service experiences recently. I won't detail them because we've all