Vancouver’s Oldest Swim Club Facing Facilities Crunch
Vancouver’s oldest swim club is struggling to find pool space amid a deepening battle for facilities in Canada at large.
Dolphin Swim Club, which has roughly 240 swimmers, is being forced out of the Britannia Community Centre pool as it is undergoing a $15.7 million renovation. That scheduling change has at been delayed until January 2027, instead of the mid-September effective date that was feared last week. Dolphin SC has been using the pool four days a week.
The club has lost 40 percent of its pool capacity after the Vancouver Aquatic Centre closed for what is anticipated to be a redevelopment stretching into 2029. That project includes a $175 million investment, but it comes with downsizing the existing 50-meter pool to a 25-meter pool. (The renovation required a vote in June for an additional $22.5 million in funding to get to the $175 number.)
“There’s simply not enough pool space in Vancouver,” Dolphins Swim Club treasurer Carola Mansfield told The Vancouver Sun. “When any pool closes for repairs, whether it’s scheduled or unscheduled, swim clubs are out of that space, and there is nowhere else that can absorb displaced aquatic users.”
The struggle in Vancouver is emblematic of what is transpiring across Canada. Many of the country’s pools are nearing the end of their functional lifespan, and with maintenance deferred, they’re coming to a crucial point of needing hefty renovations or outright closures. In the case of the VAC, it was literally falling apart, with a section of the façade detaching in 2022. A Swimming Canada report in 2025 found that the majority of publicly owned indoor pools are at least 25 years old.
A similar story played out at the University of Victoria, which shuttered the 50-meter McKinnon Pool. Olympian Mary-Sophie Harvey, who swims for CAMO in the Montreal area, trained at four different locations due to closures at the Complexe Sportif Claude-Robillard pool.