Swimmers in Turner Valley will only have a handful of days left to hit the pool.

The Dr. Lander Memorial Swimming Pool in Turner Valley will be closing their doors for the season Tuesday, September 8th after the Labour Day long weekend.

Community Service Manager for the Town of Turner Valley Monique LaBlanc says that the long weekend Monday will be the final day of operations for 2020.

"We expect, with the good weather that it will be well used before the end of the season, we typically close the day after Labour Day because most of our staff are going back to school or jobs they have to go to, they are seasonal staff and we only get to keep them until that first week of September.

LaBlanc says they'll close up shop to work on repairs and prepare for the next season.

"It's a great time for us to do facility maintenance, we do a full clean up and start getting prepared for 2021. We'll also do any repairs that are required."

 Should things go back to "normal" the pool will reopen in 2021 in late May.

"We are hoping that everything returns to its regular schedule, which means that we would be opening up during the May long weekend and running through to the Labour Day long weekend, we hopefully will be able to offer swim lessons again which we were not able to do this year because of the COVID restrictions.

LaBlanc says they handled the COVID restrictions well this season but are hoping they are more under control by next year.

"Our COVID response was very challenging of course with the guidelines in place it really meant that staff had to step it up a notch to plan a full booking system to trace those who were using the pool, we had to drop capacity by 60% to allow for the 2-meter distancing, we also developed some great initiatives through the cohort swims which allowed families or those who were in groups to swim together in a less crowded atmosphere. I'd also like to mention that the patrons were so supportive this year and respectful to staff, we appreciate their understanding and patience".

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