In Toronto’s school pools, teenagers with disabilities leave wheelchairs behind. Seniors swim laps and get respite from achy joints. Future Olympians taste competition for the first time. Adults train for triathlons. Children escape the heat on a hot summer day.
Some 19 months ago, when the district school board had announced 39 pools would close, all these programs were at risk of being cancelled.
Until, that is, problem-solver extraordinaire David Crombie stepped in.
The 73-year-old former mayor and former federal cabinet minister didn’t just figure out how to fund the pools. He built bridges between parents, the province and the board, transforming the pool situation from hostile and bleak to communicative and hopeful. For his actions, we select David Crombie as our Midtown Person of the Year.
Ask Crombie about the pools — as he sips coffee at a café near his Yonge and Eglinton condo — and he’s quick to deflect credit. “It has been a wonderful expression of community strength,” he says. True, but Crombie guided the community, the board and the province to work together. “He’s a consensus builder,” says Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
Due to changes in the school board’s taxing powers in the ’90s, the board struggled to keep the pools afloat, often using money earmarked for other programs. And so, in April 2008, the board said 39 pools would be closed within two years. Parents, students and community groups were outraged.
Each level of government shifted the blame to another; nothing was being solved. Next, on April 16, 2008, the board voted to layoff lifeguards. The situation appeared headed for ruin. That same day, the board asked Crombie to find a long-term funding solution for the pools, something that had eluded the board for a decade.
Crombie, the distinguished former politician — he’s an Officer of the Order of Canada and has several honorary degrees — and well-known problem solver seemed the perfect fit.
“What really drove me to say, ‘OK, I’ll take on the pools’ was when they built these pools it was a vision that said schools are for community use. When the pools were built, they were considered a big advance.
“And because we couldn’t organize it bureaucratically or politically — we’d so siloed ourselves — we regarded pools in schools as a problem. We had really lost our way,” says Crombie, who learned to swim at Humberside Collegiate.
And so Crombie began trying to get things back on track. At his request, the board not only postponed draining but transferred management of the 39 pools temporarily to the Toronto Lands Corp. That meant the city, Queen’s Park and the public didn’t have to talk to the board about the pools. They could talk to Crombie.
Irked by the board’s decision to close the pools, parents and community members had formed the advocacy group Let’s Make Waves to pressure the board to reopen the pools. Crombie listened to the group’s concerns and asked them to help find a solution.
Members of Let’s Make Waves and anyone else interested in the pool issue were invited to join the Aquatic Working Group, an advisory group Crombie would chair that would present suggestions to the board. “David was instrumental in helping diffuse some of the anger that some of the public swim groups felt,” says school trustee Sheila Ward.
Healing public anger is one thing. Getting Queen’s Park to deliver cash is another. Throughout the summer, Crombie and Karen Pitre, a consultant hired to work on the pool file, spoke with provincial officials. The duo explained $4 million was needed to assess the pools’ conditions and keep the pools operating the year the pools were assessed.
In August, the province agreed to provide the cash. “That gave us the road to run on,” Crombie says. The pools wouldn’t be drained for one year. Experts were hired to examine which pools needed repairs. Members of the Aquatic Working Group measured the community usage of each pool.
Based on the findings, in March 2009 the Aquatic Working Group presented the board with a report stating 24 pools could easily be made viable, eight pools were salvageable, but seven should close.
Danforth Tech’s pool was among those recommended for closure. Annette Wilde, whose two sons attend the school, says she appreciated Crombie’s direct approach. From the beginning, “he said if we couldn’t make the pools self-sustainable, the school board wasn’t going to pay for them to stay open. He never set up anybody’s expectations to be different.”
The Aquatic Working Group’s report also asked that the province pay $12 million for essential pool repairs and upgrades. If Queen’s Park picked up the one-time cost, there was a reasonable chance the pools’ incremental costs could be paid through sponsorships and permits purchased by those who rent the pools.
On April 21, Premier McGuinty announced the province would pay for pool repairs and upgrades. The next day the board agreed to reopen 13 of its most profitable pools.
The board’s decision to reopen those pools inspired parents, community members and Crombie to work even harder to find sponsorships and permits to cover incremental costs at the pools under probation. As a result, in June the board agreed to reopen six of the 39 pools. Four more were saved in September.
The work isn’t over. Led by Crombie, the Aquatic Working Group is building a strategy to reopen the nine pools scheduled for closure at the end of the year. Volunteers are working around the clock to garner sponsorships and permits for the pools at risk. It’s inspiring “watching folks grab ahold of something important to them in a thoughtful and energetic way,” Crombie says.
That Crombie agreed to wade into a political minefield deserves praise. That he brought the board, the province and the public together to find a funding solution is also award worthy. But he deserves a parade for doing all this for free. Crombie’s work on the pools — the meetings with politicians, discussions with community groups, phone calls with potential sponsors — has been purely volunteer. “I get a kick out of this stuff,” he says, with a smile.
School trustees, provincial officials, community groups, students and parents are grateful. Thanks to Crombie, 23 Toronto school pools — once set to be drained — are open.
“David is a pillar of our society,” says Heidi Wilson of Let’s Make Waves. “If there was an opportunity for him to run for mayor next year, he’d have my vote.”
