Just keep swimming

By: Sam Reiss

What do we do when life gets us down? Just keep swimming, at least according to Finding Nemo’s Dory, an animated Blue Tang. With the recent ground-breaking on Toronto’s upcoming $158 million aquatics centre, city folk shouldn’t find that too difficult a task.

The Aquatics Centre and Field House at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus will play a key role in the athletic goings-on at the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.

The centre will sport a five-metre diving tank, two 10-lane 50-metre pools and enough space for about 6,000 spectators, making Toronto home to one of the world’s premier athletic aquatic centres.

Seems a simple story: City builds pool. But aren’t there always ripples?

I, for one, am pretty excited, especially for someone who is unlikely to ever actually set foot near it.

For one thing, I’m a fan of anything that distinguishes Toronto and brings positive attention our way. For another, I’m happy it’s in Scarborough, an area of the city that has taken a beating for a long time. (And yes, some of it might be justified.) Anything that gives something tangible to the community is a welcome addition, but Scarborough aside, I’m just happy to see something noteworthy going up outside the core.

The Games themselves are exciting too, and a ground-breaking is a reminder that they’re coming up fast. Who doesn’t love a giant global (or nearly so) celebration of the human spirit, a fluffing-up of our civic pride, and a good story of victory by a seeming underdog (which always feature prominently at these things)?

Not everyone is as excited, though. At the time the Pan Am Games were announced, some detractors (notable among them the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and No Games Toronto) argued that such events divert public resources and facilitate “upscale gentrification.” Or so said the aforementioned groups’ founder, John Clarke in an old Toronto Observer article. “They’re going to lead to a very ugly displacement of low-income neighbourhoods and a sort of repressive climate for homeless people when the events actually take place,” he said.

The same article (from April 2010) quotes a retired U of T professor, Helen Lenskyj, who has written a couple of books on the impact of the Olympics on their host cities. She says housing prices tend to rise beyond the reach of even the middle class, which although true, is only temporary. She also says that the “usual so-called cleaning up of the streets to make the city look clean and wholesome to visitors involves harassing, and arresting in many cases, homeless people.” She said the police get “special powers” to “do that sort of thing.”

Clarke said the effect would be particularly virulent in a place like Scarborough, which has so many low-income communities.

While both Clarke and Lenskyj could reportedly see some benefit in the centre, they thought the money would have been better spent on several facilities in the hearts of needy communities rather than on one large facility isolated on a university campus. Of course, when you’re talking about 6,000 spectators, a few smaller facilities do not add up to one larger one.

I have a great deal of sympathy for, as they say, those less fortunate, particularly when it comes to housing. I hate the thought of people being put out of their homes — but am I naïve to think that isn’t going to happen? I’m not saying there won’t be some perhaps less than ideal treatment of some homeless people. It’s not kind, and I don’t like it, but for me, the long-term, lasting effects of the centre simply have greater impact on more people.

I don’t love gridlock, or price gouging, or any of the other unsavoury things brought out by such spectacles, but I believe there’s a big picture here, which includes not only the aquatics centre, but also The Canary District, a master-planned neighbourhood that owes its impetus to the Games as well, and is sorely needed on our downtrodden eastern waterfront. I think in the grander scheme, it is all of more benefit to more people than it is a detriment to some unfortunate few. Sadly, that’s the reality of living in an organized society — what’s good for the majority sometimes just has to be good enough.

I hope Clarke and the professor are wrong, but I’m sure there’s at least a kernel of truth in their concerns. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world. Sometimes, all we can do is just keep swimming.