After obtaining a recreation leadership diploma through Langara College and then graduating from UNBC for national resource management and resource recreation, Tamara Gillis knew the world was her oyster.
She moved around the province but wanted to be in a small northern town. After traveling through Smithers, she felt this was the place for her. She also knew the community had a pool and as a lifeguard, jumped right in.
Now, after more than 20 years, Gillis is running the Bulkley Valley Pool and Recreation Centre as the facility manager.
She has been with the facility since 2002, working in various roles.
While she started as a lifeguard, she quickly moved into a full-time role managing the racquetball courts and climbing wall when they first opened in 2003, also helping in their creation.
Gillis then moved into the facility’s assistant manager role. She took a break to have her children but between one of her maternity leaves, she worked part-time as a supervisor and lifeguard again. Once her children were in school she went back to her old programming role, then assistant manager, before becoming manager.
Working in a variety of roles throughout the years has helped her to be a manager, she said.
“I feel like I know the facility really well. And I know the community really well,” she said.
She added that is one of her favourite parts of the job, being part of the community and knowing the regular users.
“What’s really cool about managing a rec center in a small town is that you get to know your community really well. And you get connected. And you really get to know your users,” she said. “We’ve got everybody from babies all the way through, like one of our aquafit participants is Margaret and she’s 92 and she’s been coming here the whole time I’ve been here. Really cool to see that progression.”
On the flip side, Gillis said there are some difficult parts of managing a facility in a small town including having enough staff.
“I think we all know staffing has been the hardest go at pools in general, and then being at a smaller facility,” she said. “It’s hard to attract people from the city to come to a smaller pool, because it’s more challenging to guard at a bigger center, a bigger pool.”
Being short-staffed means the pool can’t operate at its full potential.
Gillis has heard the grumblings about swimming lessons, and how hard it is to get into one of them.
She said there is more demand than they can offer but they are trying their best with what they have.
“It’s partly due to staffing, but it’s also partly pool space,” she said. “We only have so much space to serve our community. And we have a bunch of different things like the Otter Swim Club, and we have our swimming lessons. And then we also have people that just want regular leisure swim. And so trying to balance all that has been tricky, for sure.”
She would like to change that in the future, though, get more water and more space for the community to use.
The Bulkley Valley Pool and Recreation Centre is working toward upgrading the facility.
The pool was constructed in 1990 after almost two decades of planning and fundraising. It was constructed at a cost of nearly $2 million. There is a plan in place that would see upgrades in three different phases. Phase 1 of the expansion, at a cost of approximately $3 million, would refit the lobby and administration areas of the pool to be bigger and more accessible, with a wider hallway and entrance.
“There’s no private office space anywhere,” explained Gillis. “So in terms of functionality, we could be more effective if we have our own separate space. Phase 1 is pushing out the front of the building and adding a fitness expansion with the administration upgrades. And that would allow us to then use our current fitness room as a classroom.
“Then also the fitness room wouldn’t be across the pool deck. And so there’s an opportunity for more hours of operation for the fitness space versus right now our limit is that when we have our gym open, we have to have a lifeguard on the pool deck.”
There is some seed money and a fundraising committee is applying for grants. A grant applied for through the RDBN in 2022 was not successful.
Phase 2 would include a pool expansion, new changerooms, improvements to the existing leisure pool and additional multipurpose spaces. Phase 3 would see a full-size community gymnasium.
A study was done in 2020 that surveyed the community and what people wanted to see in the recreation centre.
“The other things identified were that we don’t have the capacity for lane swimming,” said Gillis. “Lots of facilities, do have lane swimming almost whenever they’re open, they always have a lane available which is fantastic and we’re not able to do that.
“We are a fairly programmed pool because of our size. And so the big outcome from that study was people wanted more leisure, more swim opportunities with some more fun features, and then also lane swimming.
“And so their suggestion was that we put in a lap tank, and then adapt our current pool to be more of a leisure style pool.”
These plans have been in the works for several years, how to pay for them is the difficult part. Gillis said there is room for some more volunteers on the fundraising committee. Anyone interested in helping out can contact the centre.