I recently came across a TikTok video where a local influencer giddily took us on a tour of the revamped Eau Claire YMCA. Now a private luxury spa, I quickly became depressed by what it’s turned into and thought wow, here we go again with neoliberalism taking over and ruining our community.
The Y was once a publicly accessible space where everyday citizens could exercise and connect. Becoming a private members-only playground for the wealthy highlights everything wrong with our society and how our governments just don’t care to invest in our community.
Also the ED of the Calgary Downtown Association praising this is just wrong on so many levels. This isn’t something to celebrate. It’s a tragedy!
Backtrack a bit: when I first moved to Calgary in 2013, the Eau Claire Y was the first place I found a community. I know it sounds cheesy but hear me out. The very first Saturday I was here, I woke up and decided I’d go down to the YMCA to play some basketball. It’s what I did in Edmonton for a long time so I’ll just keep doing that.
When I arrived, there was already a group running full court pickup. I couldn’t really do anything but wait and watch. After one game ended, one of the guys looked at me and asked if I wanted to jump in. I said sure. These guys have known each other for a long time and it turns out they play there every Saturday morning at 8:00. Other than a break during the pandemic, it’s now been 12 years of consistently playing basketball with the same group. Different people cycled in and out but it’s been so long that now some of the kids of these guys join us.
I ended up spending a lot of time there working out but also volunteering as a basketball coach to kids. It was fun and I got a free membership so win-win!
Unfortunately, the Eau Claire Y wouldn’t last as long as our Saturday morning basketball runs. It closed rather suddenly in 2021 when YMCA Calgary figured it wasn’t sustainable to keep operating it. I shared my story with a couple of news outlets on this.
I met the CEO of YMCA Calgary a couple of years later while working at City Hall and just had to let her know that I’m still not over the Y’s closure. Calgary’s downtown hasn’t had an affordable recreation space since.
Which gets me to the disappointment that it’s been converted into a luxury spa and “athletic club.” Not only is the colour palette of the place completely soulless, a membership there now costs $200 a month, along with an initiation fee of $15,000 for an individual member ($25,000 for a family!!!).
That’s quite absurd and incredibly tragic. The YMCA was perfect for inner city families. Memberships were around $60 and there was financial assistance for those who needed it. The gym was full of kids and their parents playing badminton. There were free skills training programs for youth. Indigenous youth had a set time for them to play basketball and work out. It was very much a community hub, not just a rec centre.
I understood that it was the maintenance of the swimming pool that cost the most money and it was difficult to justify spending on it. I think the equal tragedy in this was that it wouldn’t have taken that much more of an investment to keep it running. Apparently, it was less than $1 million a year. Yes, maybe the City of Calgary is strapped for cash, but the provincial government certainly isn’t. There was a time when the Government of Alberta provided per capita funding to municipalities for recreation. That fizzled out in the 80s and nobody has even talked about bringing it back.
I would argue we could drive down healthcare costs if we invest in recreation and encourage healthy, active living. That’s not just sports and exercise. It includes social connection and stimulation, and active transportation. On that note, we could probably save a lot of people from mental health crises too.
Nobody seems to see this and if they do, they’re completely unwilling to act on it. More pools are closing in Calgary while other rec centres are reaching their end of life. It’s fine if you live in the outer suburbs and you can go to one of the newer super giant rec centres but the inner city desperately needs this investment. And I don’t mean a sprinkling of money to save something outdated like the Inglewood Pool for a few years. I mean something meaningful and sustained so new modern facilities can be built.
Wouldn’t it be great if our elected officials did more to save our public amenities? Leaving things to the “free market” only ices out the middle and lower class. In case they didn’t know, that’s where most of us are. And in the case of rec centres, we’re left with fewer and fewer options and those few options inevitably become overcrowded.
Or they hollow out and are turned into for-profit ventures. We don’t need any more of that happening.
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