How cities in northern Ontario solved their lifeguard shortage

CBC

4 days ago

After years of grappling with lifeguard shortages, several cities in northern Ontario say they've finally turned a corner, with fully staffed pools and supervised beaches this summer.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated lifeguard shortages across the country, leading some cities and town to scale back programming or leave certain waterfronts unsupervised.
But cities like North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury say targeted changes, including free certification courses, boosted wages and changes to training have improved the situation in the last year.
Rebuilding after the pandemic
"We definitely noticed [the shortage] coming out of COVID. There was such a long period of time where we weren't able to operate," said Kendra MacIsaac, vice-president of health and wellness for the YMCA of northeastern Ontario.
She said during the pandemic, many lifeguards found different jobs because they were unable to work and their certifications eventually expired.
Due to that shortage, the YMCA's downtown Sudbury location had to reduce their schedule or close the pool on some occasions.
In the last few years, MacIsaac said the YMCA of northeastern Ontario has worked tirelessly to run ongoing certification courses in order to recruit enough lifeguards to be able to run aquatic programs and services at pre-pandemic levels.
Usually after years of swimming lessons, 13-year-olds can start the lifeguard certification process by taking the bronze medallion and emergency first aid course. After that they can immediately take the bronze cross certification course, standard first aid and CPR ahead of the national lifeguard certification at 15 years old.
In 2023, the provincial government lowered the age requirement for lifeguards to address the staffing shortages across Ontario. MacIsaac said that made a "big difference."
But she said maintaining interest between swim lessons and lifeguard certifications is still a challenge.
"There's often a gap when kids stop lessons and aren't quite old enough for bronze medallion," MacIsaac said. To bridge that, the YMCA is offering junior lifeguard clubs and other leadership programs to keep kids engaged between the ages of 10 and 13.
Various strategies
For the first time in several years, the City of North Bay's supervised beaches are fully staffed.
"In recent years, only two of the three beaches were staffed due to the widespread shortage of lifeguards," said a city spokesperson in a statement to CBC News.
"The City of North Bay has had a full complement of lifeguards across all three of its supervised beaches — Shabogesic Beach on Lake Nipissing, as well as The Cove and Olmsted Beach on Trout Lake."
To address this shortage, in 2024 North Bay raised the hourly wage for lifeguards from the provincial minimum of $17.20 per hour to $19.50. The city says it has also benefited from the temporary closure of its indoor pool at the North Bay YMCA, allowing more certified guards to work outdoors.
Sault Ste. Marie has seen similar success. The city's aquatic supervisor, Benjamin Ayton, said staffing levels have returned to what they were before the pandemic.
"We're back to pre-COVID levels and we're doing all right, at least for the municipality," Ayton said.
"Some of the summer camps are still having a hard time, but we've been trying to help them out by getting them certified people."
To boost interest and lower financial barriers, the Sault began offering all bronze and advanced lifeguard courses for free. Even when only a few people signed up, Ayton said, the city made sure the courses still ran.
"Even though not everyone would go on to work for us, we did offer all these courses for free and that really helped our area," he said.
Greater Sudbury isn't currently facing a lifeguard shortage affecting their programming, according to Jessica Watts, manager of recreation with the city.
She explained that as COVID-19 restrictions eased, the city returned to offering advanced life guarding certification courses.
"We can train people more regularly and have them prepared to qualify for those lifeguard positions to build internal capacity and reduce reliance on external instructors," Watts said.
"We also started training our own staff to teach those more advanced levels, which allowed us to deliver those advanced courses in house."
Both Ayton and MacIsaac said life guarding is a public safety service that plays a critical role in preventing drownings and ensuring access to water-based recreation.
"Most of our job is prevention," Ayton said. "It's not a pleasant experience to have to deal with [an emergency] situation like that, but you do the best you can and it is rewarding when you are able to assist."