Lifeguards, from left, Brad Doley, Dave Smith and Sue Keeley, at the Canada Games Aquatic Centre in Saint John on April 21.Stephen MacGillivray/The Globe and Mail
Brad Doley, 65, worked in the mill in Saint John for close to four decades before retiring nine years ago. He swims at the Canada Games Aquatic Centre in town five times a week, 8,000 metres in total.
Sue Keeley spent 33 years as an accounting clerk at the Saint John port authority. The 66-year-old, who taught herself how to swim as a child, is also a regular at the New Brunswick facility.
So is Dave Smith, a one-time Canada Post letter carrier, who is almost a decade into his retirement. At 67, he took up triathlons four years ago, a pursuit that required him to finally learn how to swim. Before that, he says, “I couldn’t swim the length of a bedroom.”
Last fall, as they were getting out of the pool and towelling off, George Knoepfler, the head lifeguard, asked the three swimmers a question they were never expecting: How would they feel about training to become lifeguards?
Mr. Knoepfler and the aquatic centre’s management were getting desperate. Like many pools across Canada, they were facing a shortage of lifeguards. Almost all the ones they did have were teenagers or university students, and the centre was at risk of having to curtail its daytime programming, including the Swim to Survive program for schoolchildren.
The solution went against the grain but was obvious in retrospect: Recruit the people who are at the pool every day.
The three older swimmers were surprised by Mr. Knoepfler’s offer – and a bit apprehensive, seeing as how most of the lifeguards they were used to seeing were much younger.
“What kind of physical abilities would they be testing me on?” Mr. Doley wondered.
But in the end, they all gave Mr. Knoepfler a thumb’s up and agreed to do their part to help address the staff shortages hampering pools.
The pandemic, by forcing pool closings in many Canadian communities for long stretches of time, and reducing hours for even longer, wreaked havoc on finding lifeguards. Many left for other jobs, never to return, and the pipeline to certify new ones all but dried up.
With the peak swimming season already here, provincial and municipal governments are desperate to get pools running at full capacity and beaches safe again – only 1 per cent of drownings happen in lifeguard-supervised settings. They are getting creative to address the shortages.
Ontario is proposing to lower the minimum age for lifeguards from 16 to 15.
The City of Vancouver this month launched a recruitment drive – at job fairs and on social media, and by reaching out to swim clubs and water polo associations.
“We were really working at recruiting a whole new batch of lifeguards or trying to get retirees that used to lifeguard years ago to come back to the industry,” says Peter Fox, Vancouver’s manager of recreation services. The city needs approximately 450 lifeguards for the peak season. Right now, it has just over 300.
It takes approximately 90 hours of training to become a lifeguard, says Stephanie Bakalar, corporate communications manager for the Lifesaving Society of Ontario. First you must earn a series of swimming certifications, then pass an emergency first-aid course. After that, you need to get your Bronze Cross and, finally, pass the National Lifeguard certification test.
Mr. Doley, Ms. Keeley and Mr. Smith, the new recruits in Saint John, ran through the entire gauntlet – just them, no teenagers present – in one week and two weekends in January, at their local aquatic centre, with its Olympic-sized 50-metre competition pool and two smaller ones.
They had to demonstrate their front crawl and breaststroke with their heads above water; swim two metres under the surface for at least 15 metres; retrieve a nine-kilogram brick at the bottom of the pool; jump off a five-metre diving platform; and swim 400 metres in less than 10 minutes.
Their success has convinced the pool to run another adults-only lifeguard course in the summer, says Ben Tremblay, the centre’s aquatics manager.
The satisfactions of the job are even greater than Mr. Smith imagined. He’s now lifeguarding two days a week.
“We’re all on a team to protect everybody and keep everybody safe,” he says. “It’s such a great way to fill the time and be by the pool and help the community.”
Ms. Keeley works three days a week, and helps with the Swim to Survive classes, which teach children in Grades 3, 4 and 5 to be comfortable in the water and able to swim to safety were they to fall off a boat or otherwise find themselves in trouble.
“A lot of these children have never had the opportunity to go to a pool or facility like this, and a lot of them are terrified of the water,” she says.
The job – and the pressure of its responsibility – has already had its share of heart-pounding moments, Mr. Doley says.
“I really didn’t realize how much of an impact it could have on you until I did my very first rescue.”
It was only his 10th shift. There were many people at the aquatic centre that day, including a large school group in the main pool. Mr. Doley saw a boy jump off a diving board and instantly start to panic when he hit the water.
Mr. Doley blew his whistle as he was trained to do, then dove in, grabbed the boy, put him on his hip and brought him to safety at the side of the pool.
“We were told by our instructor ‘When it happens, your training will kick in,’” he says.
Although Mr. Knoepfler didn’t hire the three older lifeguards to act as mentors to many of the younger ones, they have grown into that role, he says.
Mr. Smith teaches them about how to deal with stress.
Mr. Doley tries to help them develop a solid work ethic.
Ms. Keeley gives the younger guards advice too, although it’s not about work but about how to move through this life – it must be said – swimmingly.
“I tell them to enjoy their life and have a great time and do everything,” she says. “Whatever they choose to study or do, to follow through with their dreams. And don’t let nobody hold them back, ever.”