Discussions

Adam said the other day in a post to discuss a wide range of topics – the woder the better so here’s one !  
 
I work with a group that for the past dozen years has been fighting to keep the Sherbrook Pool open in downtown Winnipeg. It's the only pool in the core and in a neighbourhood where the kids have very few rec options. The city has been more of a hindrance than anything else and, we suspect, has been itching to shut the place down for years. Unfortunately for them we’ve been active and have met them at almost every turn. Over the years we have organized a swim club for area youth, arranged and organized a free swimming lesson program and put hundreds of kids through it, done engineering studies of the building, carried out lots of promotional work for the facility…all on our own dime.  
 
The city still isn’t on board with us and when news of the closing of the roller rink (a block from the pool) came and went without any reaction from the city I blew a nut, so to speak. If you want to talk about punishing kids after they get in trouble administrators, politicians, media will fall all over themselves to get in on it (remember the ‘I’ll see your $10m for policing and raise you $5m’ episodes from the recent election). When it comes, however, to keeping services going to keep kids form getting In trouble in the first place – nobody is much interested  
 
I spent a lot of the day fuming to media posting on forums and wrote a letter to the ed that got published today in the FreeP.  
 
What is the situation in Brandon re: youth rec opportunities in less stable neighbourhoods ? I’ve been away from city hall stuff there for so long that I am out of the loop. Neighbourhood based facilities and programming, places open hours when kids are out and about, any programming that is unique, what groups run them etc. If there are any success stories I would love to hear them as I plan on beating this drum here in Winnipeg some more over the next few weeks.