Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 59 • Issue 10
Norplex Pool closure shuts down swim club and kayaking lessons ‘I can’t live long term in a place that doesn’t have a pool,’ says avid swimmer
BYELECTION 2019: BLAKE ELLIS NEWS PAGE 2
BYELECTION 2019: CHIEW CHONG NEWS PAGE 2
Thompson Citizen photo by Kyle Darbyson TNT Swim Club athlete Abi Deibert practises her front crawl at the Norplex Pool on Jan. 22, three weeks before the City of Thompson shut down the facility permanently due to safety concerns. BY KYLE DARBYSON
KYLE@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
BYELECTION 2019: ANDRE PROULX NEWS PAGE 3
MURDER SUSPECT ARRESTED IN THOMPSON NEWS PAGE 10
The sudden and permanent closure of Norplex Pool last month shocked many Thompsonites. Comments on the city’s Feb. 14 Facebook post announcing the facility’s immediate shutdown showed emotions ranging from confusion to sadness to downright anger. The decision was made after council received the results of an engineering review, not yet made public, which identified major structural problems, electrical vulnerabilities and ventilation issues. The facility has served as the only indoor pool of its kind north of the 55th parallel since opening in 1977. Criminal lawyer Serena Puranen took this news particularly hard because swimming laps at the Norplex Pool was a big part of her routine. “To me it’s like dealing with a death,” she said. “Water, to me, is my happy place. And obviously I have a really stressful job, so swimming is the thing that keeps me calm and keeps me centred.” Puranen said she’s also questioning how long she’ll stay in Thompson as of result of this development. “The renos I was planning to do to my house, to make my house good for me to live in, are [becoming] the renos I need to do to sell the house, because I can’t live long-term in a place that doesn’t have a pool,” she said. Competitive swimmers could be
having similar conversations with their families since the Thompson Northern Torpedoes (TNT) Swim Club is going on hiatus until a new facility is built. TNT head coach Luke Deibert said he and other parents came to the painful decision to suspend this program last week, with no other facilities left in town to accommodate their needs. “The nearest pool we could use is in The Pas or Flin Flon, which is four hours away,” he said. “So we could do a dry land program and then go there on the weekends, but that’s a huge expense for many to do on a regular basis.” Deibert went on to say that this turn of events is especially sad for a club that recently celebrated their 40th anniversary and hosted a swim meet in January that attracted over 70 northern swimmers. “Some kids might want to continue to attend maybe one meet left this year, maybe two, but we’re not training anymore,” he said. “We’ll proceed on an individual basis, but our team practices and stuff like that is shutting down.” Moving forward, Deibert is hoping to install a functioning executive that can meet once or twice a year and possibly work with whatever committee is involved in rebuilding this facility. The Norplex Pool’s kayaking lessons are also on hold for the foreseeable future.
Benjamin Sewell has been running these clinics since 2008, and normally accommodates a variety of different people who want to learn the basics of kayaking, including around 100 students from R.D. Parker Collegiate and Wapanohk Community School every year. However, without access to this controlled environment, Sewell said his program isn’t viable for the foreseeable future. “It is disappointing,” he said. “Having been living in Thompson for 10 years, the Norplex Pool is equivalent or given the same weight as the amazing pickerel fishing or the endless snowmobiling, the ATV trails, stuff like that … that pool is a big draw for me and my family to live here and continue to live here. ” To make matters worse, Sewell’s career as an RCMP officer means that he might not be around to restart the program if or when a new facility is built. “I will move at some point in my career again and may never see the new pool,” he said. “So that’s the disappointment, is the shortterm loss of a aquatic facility. We may never teach kayaking again in Thompson.” Puranen shares a similar sense of uneasiness about the future of indoor swimming in Thompson. Even though the city said in their Feb. 14 Facebook post that “the development of a new pool facility is currently underway,” she remains
skeptical of the current council’s ability to make this happen given the financial constraints they are working with. “I know Mayor [Colleen] Smook says that she’s hoping to have it built within a year. I think that’s an optimistic, idealistic notion, and the world’s got to have optimists, but I’m a realist and I don’t see it happening,” said Puranen. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we never get a pool.” Right now, Puranen is also looking for answers on how the Norplex Pool deteriorated to the point where it required a permanent shutdown, since she’s observed glaring problems that went unresolved for years. “Between the city manager and the city council, I don’t know how they let it get that bad in the first place,” she said. “I know that that hole in the ceiling has been there for at least three years, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s been there for four. I honestly feel like nobody’s cared about that pool or paid any attention to it.” Puranen and others with opinions on and questions about the closure will get a chance to hold the administration’s feet to the fire during a March 7 public meeting at the Letkemann Theatre. Not only will mayor and council present more facts behind their decision to close the pool, but they’ll also field questions from about this process and their plans to construct a new facility. This meeting will begin at 7 p.m.