The last day of swimming at the Weyburn Leisure Centre's outdoor pool is September 1st, allowing users to enjoy the pool throughout the long weekend, including some bonus family swims on Labour Day.
"The outdoor pool has never been operational through the long weekend. It's always closed Friday of the weekend before," said Director of Leisure Services, Richard Henning, noting this is part of the extended summer usage for the pool, which also opened a month earlier this spring due to the indoor pool being closed.
He explained the reasons for the pool being closed even when the weather could stay warm for weeks.
"We have limited staffing available with a lot of high school kids that are lifeguards for us, and they're going back to school," Henning said.
"We did a survey to see how many people we could have available, how many trained lifeguards. With students returning to school and their extracurriculars starting off, whether that's football or hockey camps, things like that, we didn't have enough staff that could make themselves available to keep the pool operational."
With the days getting shorter, and sundown by 8 p.m., and therefore the outdoor spaces cool off a lot quicker, he reminded those who may want to cool down on potential hot days, Weyburn's two spray parks, at the Don Mitchell Tot Lot and at River Park, will remain open, weather permitting, until September 15th.
"So there are places for people to go and still get in those activities. There's also Nickle Lake available as well," he stated.
Another big part of the outdoor pool closure timing is the work ahead for the City's staff.
"We need time for our staff to be able to turn these facilities around and get them winterized so that we can have them functional again for next year. We have to clean all the facilities, sanitize everything, get it back in storage sheds, then start blowing out lines, decommissioning pumps, and things like that."
He added that historically, the weather in September can be unpredictable, from heat waves to snow falling, and all of the behind-the-scenes work needs to be done before the weather changes.
