November 2 Town Hall Meeting

Citizens have their say

After failed attempts by the public at large to effectively voice their concerns, Diana Whalen, MLA Clayton Park, organized and hosted a Town Hall style meeting at Halifax West High School's auditorium. The meeting was to serve the purpose that so far HRM had failed to provide: a chance for citizens to have their say.

Those in attendance were encouraged to speak, one at a time, about their thoughts on the MCRC. Moderated by a professional, speakers were limited to a three minute time limit for the sake of giving as many people as possible the chance to express their thoughts within a reasonable time frame.

Over the course of a few hours, many concerned members of the community vented their frustrations.

Speaker Highlights

Gigi Went - Clayton Park
"If you're going to collect money.you may as well go for the gusto, so to speak, and have the kind of centre that we all need as opposed to going small and later on having to rebuild again. So therefore option C for sure, or better because I feel that this area is growing constantly by leaps and bounds and it's truly needed."

Kevin Ross - Kearney Lake Rd
"I am heavily involved in competitive swimming. I've been in just about every pool in NS and my concern [is] that even option C is too small. At the last meeting we heard how overused everything put into this area is. What they plan [option B], tends to be smaller than Port Hawksbury, Truro , anything else. The largest population base is here. When I hear people talking about building something, it's 'location, location, location'. There are many opportunities to have a good facility here. THIS is the location, THIS is where the facility needs to be. We need a big facility. If Sackville, Dartmouth , Cole Habour, have facilities that are twice the size of the plan that they have here, and this is the largest population base, 200,000 that's a fifth of the province within a 20 minute drive, it's going to be too small and the people will not be able to get here, it will not be used. And if we go with option B, it's a total waste of money and we're better off with nothing."

Greg Archibald - Clayton Park West
"I am a parent of a son who is in Track and Field. If you use the available land that is at a premium here to build something that's not going to meet global needs for now into the many years into the future, then you've not appropriately or efficiently used the land that's available. The public around here has little access in the winter time to healthy safe environments to walk run and exercise. Going to an indoor track facility which can be a multipurpose site inclusive of an aquatic centre I think is the best thing for the public in the long term."

Craig Durling - Beechville
"Option C doesn't even scratch the surface of what is needed in this area. Currently [at Centennial Pool]. there are three competitive swim teams that swim there, a diving team that's using the only ten meter platform in Atlantic Canada, two synchro teams, a masters swim team, a triathlon team, water polo team, senior swimmers that swim there, recreation swimmers, swimming lessons, public swims. What exactly is going to take this facilities place when they decide that they do not want to keep it running any more, and where are all these teams and all these users going to go? Option C. is just not large enough to fulfill this need."

Les Muise
"This has become the centre of activity for the region. Just after [the Joseph Howe Superstore was opened] they did a survey at the front door. They asked everybody coming in the door what the last three numbers were in their postal codes, to try and define where the traffic was coming from. Realistically, there are no boundaries. Everything this side of the harbour comes to Bayers Lake . to do their shopping, to do their entertainment, everything else. So any facility that you build here, much like the library, will draw from the whole city and out[wards]. So even the 200,000 figure is low.. Anything we build here has the potential to become a regional, national event."

Susan Kirkland - Rockingham
"I speak as a mother of three and as a health professional. I think that it is absolutely essential that we provide resources and facilities for our children and for our adults in NS. We are a province that is struck by disease, by illness, by ill health, and by all kinds of problems we're going to encounter in the future. We have to create an environment where our families can be active. And option C is really not an option. It will not cut it. We have to think big. We have to have a vision. We have to really push for the future and push for the future of our kids. It's a waste of money to even approach option C."

Corrine Boudreau with her daughter Enya, 11 months old. - Clayton Park
"I would like to draw a parrelel to the Kesshan Goodman library. Any day that you walk into the library. you will see tons of kids with their parents in there reading. I think that what the library has done for literacy in this community, a first class rec centre could do for fitness and the health of the community."

Marco DiQuinzio
"We seem to suffer from a 'not us' attitude. I think it's time that Halifax took it to a new level where we have to show the rest of the Maritimes what leadership really is and we have to show Canada how great a city this really is. We should be a model for all other cities. This is an important time for Halifax , we need to move into the future and we need to have some future vision and commitment to making this happen."

Bette El-Hawary - Executive Director for Swim Nova Scotia
"Myself and a few of the other aquatic groups of gotten together and we've gone to board meetings, we've presented our cases, we've presented different options on how our different organizations can utilize the facilities. It seems as though all of that had been disregarded.. Even option C isn't an option. We need to step it up to the world class level and to get even a national level meet for competitive swimming, is an eight lane 50 meter pool plus a warm down facility. I know when young kids come to the pool to watch a swim meet they say 'Wow. Look at those kids. I want to be that.'. We need to get our kids encouraged and excited about becoming a National level swimmer, a synchronized swimmer, whatever it might be."

Eleanor Power
"Not only do we need swimming, we need a dryland facility. We have so many activities and groups in this area."

Joanne Walsh - Clayton Park
"I am very concerned about the health of [the] children. We have over 700 students in our school. This kind of facility is very important. I really think that option D is the biggest and best that we can be and I can't see anything smaller going ahead."

Renee Field
"As a reporter trying to get access to this story, it is very hard for city staff to tell me what is going on."

Maureen Hanson - Bridgeview
"I would really like to invite the people who are designing this to go up and have a swim with these kids. It's just like a herd of cattle on open swim day. it's so crowded, and they're thinking about building a smaller one."

Lauren Person - Rockingham
"What is there to keep my kids off the streets? So having a pool, having things like these activities to keep them healthy and occupied is absolutely critical."

Daniel Rokema - Parkland Dr .
"I come [to these meetings] for the same thing every time. I come for the youth. I grew up just outside Ottawa in Napean. My highschool and the highschool beside us, we had Steve Yzerman who went to that school, we had Eddie and Jerry Perenti who became Olympic swimmers, we had Julie Barton who was an Olympic tennis player, we had Angela Deroche who won the Canadian Skate championships and also went on to worlds. They didn't do that because they were just unnaturally gifted; they did it because of the infrastructure that we had in the little town of 87,000 people of Napean. I am ashamed that I live in a city that is shooting for the Commonwealth games that has the infrastructure that pales in comparison to Nairobi , Kenya . The reason [ Nairobi , Kenya ] has infrastructure is because they invest in the youth. The reason they invest in the youth is because they truly believe the youth are the leaders of tomorrow. Halifax has not shown that. Halifax continues to fail on that. We need to have a facility where we truly say "Hey, you the youth, the leaders of tomorrow, are important to us.""

Kelly Atkins
"I'm a pediatric physiotherapist and I am on the executive of the national pediatric division. One of our largest concerns in Nova Scotia is the outrageous obesity rate and also. the disease process rate in Nova Scotia in General.. We currently have no place for [disabled children] to go swimming so that they are being embraced. We need a ten lane pool.plus we need to have the cool down facility. It's not just for competitive swimmers it's to be able to accommodate the greater HRM community. and allow kids and adults. to be able to be interested in that sport at an appropriate level. They do not build half-rinks, they do not build half-soccer fields. I don't know why we have to build a half or a quarter of a pool that cannot embrace the appropriate level of programming."

Mel Hackett
"There has been a real communication problem with HRM. If you look at Port Hawkesbury. the population there is around 4000, [they have] a 17 million facility."

Janet Gaunier
"If the city thinks that as a community we're going to get behind them with this very small vision of theirs and throw eight million dollars of fund raising at this project they are sorely mistaken. This community is not going to support any of these options. They are too small, they are too short sighted. 200,000 people need to use this facility. You will not see a drop of money from me in terms of fund raising."