Residents in the Maple Leaf/Rustic community were led to believe that a new pool facility would be built at the new St. Fidelis site on Falstaff Avenue and Culford Road to replace the existing one. The announcement of a new pool came as part of a plan to relocate St. Fidelis to the site in a new building funded by the Ontario Government. In the last year, the decision was made by City staff to move the pool to the current Falstaff Community Center location.  This location has a history of gun violence, and several members of the community have expressed that they would not feel safe going to that facility.

Additionally, families whose students attend or will be attending St. Fidelis school were looking forward to having access to the pool as part of their Physical Education program as were students from other nearby schools. Furthermore, community members especially seniors who have been waiting a very long time to resume their exercise activities were expecting that the swimming facility would be built along with the school in a timely manner.  This will no longer be possible.

Members of this community, made up of responsible taxpayers, have been anxiously awaiting the re-opening of the pool at the Falstaff and Culford location. This location is ideally situated to serve all the residents of our community as it is centrally located and can be easily accessed by walking to the site. We are led to believe that planning for the school site is already well advanced, and we were led to believe that until very recently that planning involved the construction of a public pool. We have difficulty understanding why a long-awaited public pool would be delayed at the last minute, likely for years, simply to move it a few hundred meters away.  We also have difficulty understanding, given these last-minute changes to what had been promised to the community, why we should believe that these plans will not be changed again in the time it will take for this new proposal to deliver results.  

The residents of this community deserve better than this sort of delay.

We are, therefore, requesting that the original decision to build the pool on the Falstaff and Culford site as a separate building next to St. Fidelis school be reinstated noting that this would not delay the construction of the school.