June 21, 2024: Calgary's water crisis

City of Calgary Declares State of Local Emergency
Whether you know it as the location of The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth or the closest airport to Banff, the City of Calgary has recently been crippled by a major water main break. Residents have been asked to reduce usage during activities of daily living and public swimming pools are closed until further notice. This will have a HUGE impact on summer programming (swim lessons, day camps, public swim, etc.) and employment opportunities for aquatic staff in the coming weeks.

Nobody: Newborn Swim Lessons
Someone sent me this Instagram reel which parodies the infant self-rescue (ISR) swim lessons you might have seen go viral on social media by replacing the infant with an adult to better illustrate the absurdity of how scary it would be for the child to be thrown into water to "teach" survival skills.

Senior lifeguards, 76 and 90, make a big impact at Ohio pool
I attended a session at a conference recently where aquatic staff discussed a program at their facility in Atlantic Canada unofficially called "Greywatch", i.e. recruiting senior (age 65+) regular aquatic facility users to become certified lifeguards. That certainly seems to be a growing trend since the Pandemic, and this article shows that's a common thread in multiple parts of North America.

Olympic Hopeful J.J. Rice Dead at 18 in Diving Accident
I don't have any statistics to back this up, but freediving and shallow water blackout (SWB) fatalities seem to be on the rise in the last few years. The latest is a young man who grew up on the water in Tonga and had qualified for the Paris 2024 Olympics. What an unimaginable tragedy for his friends & family.

Thank you for all you do for the aquatic industry, it doesn't go unnoticed.

Katie Crysdale
Lakeview Aquatic Consultants Ltd.