After a year and a half with no pool in Radville, the Radville-Laurier Regional Park opened its brand new pool on Canada Day and held a Grand Opening on July 12th. The new pool now also features a water wheelchair.
Board Chair Claude Carles said they had planned the pool to be fully accessible for all ages.
"This chair is really a shower chair for handicapped or challenged people for in a shower, and when we built the pool, we made a zero-entry pool so that little kids could go in and walk in as deep as they wanted to, and same thing with someone who was handicapped, they could get in easily as well. The pool will serve anyone from a year old to to 102 years old if they want because they can walk in on the one side, it starts on a steady slope going down into a four-foot area."
Carles said they had requested the pool design include this with this in mind, as the previous pool had a chair lift.
"You had to take them out of their chair, put them in the lift, then lift them into the pool, and then the same thing taking them out. This way, this little chair is made for water. It's all sealed bearings and stuff, and all the arms lift up and all that and they just have to shift themselves from their chair to that chair, and then wheel into the pool, and away they go. It's been great."
He shared how the process of replacing the lift with a chair got started.
"We had looked up pool equipment like chairs and stuff to do this because I had talked to my cousin who has been in a wheelchair for years, and I said, 'do you have an old wheelchair that we could use that we could put it in the water and take it out?' and he said, 'no, let me let look it up, but I think you need something better than a wheelchair for that'. So he spent one night looking on the internet."
He said they were indeed able to purchase a shower wheelchair online.
"The chair is one that they use in old folks homes and to shower people," noted Carles. "The handles go down and everything, plus the price was very attractive because it was only like $400, whereas any specialty wheelchairs are like $6,000. So it was a good deal for us, and I talked to one of the gals who used it in this last week here, and she said it's perfect. It works really good. So I was glad to hear that."
The project has been ongoing for a year and a half.
"It gets pretty hot on days like this, and we've been out a pool for a few years and it wasn't good for the town. Everyone leaves town because there's nothing here in the summertime, but now we hope to attract more people to stay and take the swimming lessons here and everything else."
The new pool also features artificial turf, a diving board, a water slide, as well as an in-ground whirlpool-style vortex fountain, which is a huge hit for the kids.
"We're hoping now that more and more of the surrounding area will come as well as Radville and Laurier," he shared. "We get a lot of people from further south, we've had some Weyburn people come as well in the last while. So we're hoping that more and more people come and use it and visit, and use it, because that's what we built it."
The park also now features a new campground with 14 fully-serviced sites, and they will soon be upgrading power services and water services at the rink and the park.
"The rink project will now start and be continuing on through the winter as well, and hopefully completed by next summer sometime."
As for project funding, Carles noted the volunteer-run board of eight, who meet every two weeks, accesses grants from the provincial and federal governments. They have also been receiving contributions from the local municipalities, the Town of Radville and the R.M. of Laurier.