Despite a national lifeguard shortage, Greater Sudbury’s seven supervised beaches are good to go, with lifeguards on duty from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. until Aug. 21.
“We are fully staffed at this time, and we certainly hope to remain fully staffed to the end of the season,” city recreation manager Cindy Dent told Sudbury.com, adding that although they don’t have as much wiggle room with staff levels as they’d like, they have enough people to operate.
With the number of lifeguard applicants on the decline during the past decade, she said they were anticipating a further drop as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have been offering as many advanced lifesaving courses as possible leading up to the summer.
“We were successful, we do have a full fleet of summer staff … and are able to offer a full service level in Greater Sudbury at our seven beaches,” Dent said.
At those beaches in other jurisdictions affected by a lifeguard shortage, health measures meant to curb the spread of COVID-19 putting lifeguard certification and recertification programs on hold have been blamed. Several media outlets have cited lifeguard shortages in North Bay.
The seven Greater Sudbury beaches to include lifeguard supervision are:
- Bell Park Main Beach, at Ramsey Lake and accessible from the Elizabeth Street parking lot
- Capreol Public Beach on Marshy Lake, located off Lakeshore Street in Capreol
- Centennial Park at Vermilion River, located off of Graham Road in Whitefish
- Kalmo Beach at Whitson Lake, located off of Kalmo Beach Road in Val Caron
- Moonlight Beach on Ramsey Lake off of Moonlight Beach Avenue
- Nepahwin Beach off of Paris Street
- Whitewater Lake Park located off of Laurier Street West in Azilda
Both Moonlight Beach and Bell Park Main Beach received the prestigious Blue Flag Canada certification last month. Moonlight Beach has been a recipient since 2017 and Bell Park Main Beach has been a recipient since 2015, and were selected for meeting high environmental, safety, accessibility and cleanliness standards.
The Kalmo Beach is currently slated for a potential redevelopment, with Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan putting a successful motion forward recently for city administration to draft a business case for 2023 budget deliberations. The plan would push forward the recommendations made in the Kalmo Beach Master Plan, released in 2019.
In the meantime, Kalmo Beach joins the six others in having lifeguards at the ready from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. until Aug. 21.
“In a community of over 330 lakes, I would suggest it’s extremely important for us to have supervised beaches, it’s certainly an amenity our citizens and our community enjoy,” Dent said.
“When you have that much water in a community it’s extremely important to learn to swim and also to have opportunities for people to learn to swim in safe areas that are supervised.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
