Well, I guess that’s it for the Aqua Centre.
It’s an unceremonious end for a building that’s played an important role in a lot of our lives. I can’t speak to what your memories of the place are, but if you’d allow me a moment of reminiscence, I’d like to call back my own memories of the pool and the building as a whole.
I took my swimming lessons there. I took part in a special kids’ swimming program at the pool every Tuesday morning for a few years growing up. I spent countless summer days and evenings there for Nickle Nights, Toonie Tuesdays, free swims, family swims, you name it. There was one summer where all we did, day after day, was go to the pool and do dumb stuff off the diving board. Everyone was cool. Everyone was a stuntman. Everyone was happy.
Later, I’d use the weight room upstairs almost every day, trying to whip my doughy body into a slightly less doughy body. It worked. When I went away for university, I’d come back home and I never knew what I’d see on my way back. Friends would change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. My Pop, who was ill, didn’t get any better. The world didn’t always seem certain.
I could always count on one thing, though - the weight room. Those weird blue walls and mirrors became a second home for me. No matter how things went at home, at work or with the boys that day, I could bike down to the pool, walk upstairs and everything went into stasis. I’d work out right before the place closed and when I was all done, I’d spray and wipe down everything I used, move everything back into place and shut the lights off.
There, 20 pounds was 20 pounds, a deadlift was a deadlift and any residual crap from the outside world was checked at the door with your outdoor shoes.
When I was 19, I got myself and a friend in a car accident. It was completely my fault. I was a stupid teenager and we were incredibly lucky to not only get out, but get out more or less unharmed. I let a lot of good people down and I didn’t know what would happen next.
That night, still shaken up and possibly a little concussed, I went to the weight room. The world out there seemed confusing and scary, but for an hour or two, the weights were a refuge.
I was at the centre the last day it was open. I bought a three-month weight room membership last month as a New Year’s resolution move and I went religiously. I beat my feet into the exercise bike every night. I was starting to lose some of the weight I’ve gained by sitting behind a desk and typing things like this column all day.
The place closed at 10 p.m. I shut the weight room lights off at 9:50. I was alone. Didn’t even stick around to hang out in the sauna. If I knew what was coming, I would have savoured it more.
I’m going to miss the place. I have a lot of good memories wrapped up in those walls. I’m going to miss that faint smell of chlorine, the pastel colours of the changerooms and the sound of classic rock playing over the pool loudspeakers. I’ll even miss the things that let you know how old the pool was - the peeling and flaking floor finish, for instance, or the clock with the coloured arrows moving in constant motion that might not have changed since I was four.
I know the centre has been under the gun in recent years. Flin Flon’s population - and perhaps more importantly for this discussion, its tax base - isn’t getting any bigger or any younger. As the building got older, it cost more to keep open. Repairs got more and more frequent. Just in the last eight months, the centre was shut down three times, each for weeks at a shot.
Speaking for others, I know a large number of people who volunteer with the Aqua Jets and the Aqua Doves, who go to the pool’s fitness courses and seniors’ courses. Karen MacKinnon might honestly be in a wheelchair if it wasn’t for this place, as would others.
It’s been apparent for quite some time that Flin Flon needed to replace the centre. I didn’t want to admit it, you likely didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. Things don’t last. Something new was needed.
Flin Flon is not some random hick burg in the armpit of the earth, population 53. As a northern town, with other vital services usually not easily accessible one town over a few minutes down the road, we need to have more than a town our size should. It’s a basic fact of life. Towns of 5,000-ish people don’t usually have all the things we have here.
When we look at recreation facilities, it’s sometimes easy to just look at the dollars and cents. There’s merit in doing that. There’s usually no sense in keeping things going if the finances don’t work out.
Recreation, and specifically the Aqua Centre, are different. There’s more at play here than just the dollars and cents. There’s the nickels and toonies. There’s the swimming lessons, the cannonballs, the Aquacise, the personal best on the bench press, the swim meets, the synchro shows, the everything.
The memories.
They’re worth more to me than whatever deficit needs to be paid to keep the lights on.
I think a new centre needs to be built because the next generation of Flin Flonners deserve to have the same kind of fond memories of the Aqua Centre that I have. I’ll cherish those for a long time.
The Aqua Centre is dead. Long live the Aqua Centre. God, I’m gonna miss the place.
