Today is the final day of the season at the Altona Aquatic Centre.

Eric Hildebrand, Recreation Manager for the town, says, overall, they enjoyed a strong season.

“Throughout the [coming] winter, we'll be able to take a look at some of the statistics that we've been keeping and go through some of the financials to see, do we look at swim slots in the future, or do we look at perhaps any of the operating hours being changed. In the past, we sold season passes and we really weren't tracking what type of traffic was coming through at specific times on any given day. Now we have that information.”

Public health restrictions forced the Town to alter how the Centre operated this year. Despite tighter capacities, Hildebrand says the Centre’s swimming lesson attendance suffered only a slight drop.

Booking time slots for swimming was one adjustment that went over very well.

“We found a lot of great comments coming back from parents with younger children who really appreciated having a swim slot and limited number of people in the facility at one time, and maybe not [having to] worry about if there's a lot of activity and traffic in the pool, and found that an hour and forty-five minutes was a perfect amount of time for most families with younger children," noted Hildebrand. Older swimmers tended to book multiple slots on the same day.

Prior to opening in June, the facility underwent a major upgrade. Hildebrand says they couldn’t be happier with the results.

“We replaced the entire liner and with that, every accessory, so from a maintenance standpoint, we were very pleased how everything was working. It just happened to be in a season where we had seen very little rain for the majority of the summer, and of course, we are in a position where we are trying to conserve the amount of water we are using. The amount of water that we used to operate the facility this season would be considerably down from when we last operated in 2019.”

Hildebrand was very pleased not only with efforts of Park maintenance staff to keep the pool water balanced and safe on a daily basis, but also with the Centre’s seasonal staff as well as patrons for respecting public health restrictions.

“The staff at the Aquatic Centre had been given directives from our office in terms of the Public Health orders, and I felt they went above and beyond in their efforts to follow the orders to ensure the safety of the guests at the pool. These are young adults who value their job, and their primary role is to maintain a safe environment, and now we asked them to navigate through the changing public health orders and also to become sanitizers, all with a good attitude and a smile on their face. They’re the real stars of our facility and need to be thanked for making our season not only a possibility, but a positive, fun and safe place to spend time.”