The Vancouver Park Board has reversed course on a controversial decision to discontinue lifeguards at several popular city beaches.
On April 27, Park Board Commissioners voted to reallocate $600,000 of funding to continue lifeguarding services at four of the five beaches it had previously said it would cut the service from: Spanish Banks East, Spanish Banks West, Sunset, and Third Beach. Trout Lake, however, will not have lifeguards this summer.
Lifeguards will also remain available at Locarno, Jericho, Kitsilano, English Bay, and Second Beach.
“This was a difficult decision in the current fiscal environment, but we need to make sure our beaches are safe,” said Tom Digby, Park Board chair, in a release.
“We have a long history of having excellent beach lifeguarding Spanish Banks West, Spanish Banks East, Locarno, Jericho, Kitsilano, Sunset, English Bay, Second and Third Beach in Vancouver, and residents expect that.”
When the Park Board announced the decision in March of this year, it resulted in public outcry and worry about beach safety.
“There is no replacement for certified lifeguards who are equipped with the training and skills to conduct rescues,” said the Lifesaving Society in a release.
“Drowning is preventable – with the support of professionally trained lifeguards and related
investments in water safety. In British Columbia, fewer than one per cent of drownings occur in lifeguard-supervised areas, with 99 per cent of incidents happening in unsupervised waters.”
Why did the Park Board make this decision?
Pete Fry, a councillor with the Green Party of Vancouver and a mayoral candidate, told Daily Hive last month that these beaches had been “essentially deprioritized as a result of responding to the pressures from the Ken Sim ‘zero mean zero’ budget cuts, which has meant that the Park Board has had to find about $15 million in savings.”
In April, Fry introduced a motion to Vancouver City Council, asking City staff to allocate the $600,000 to reinstate lifeguards in time for the 2026 beach season. He said it was in response to a Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation motion requesting up to $600,000 from City Council to reinstate lifeguards at these four beaches. But City Council did not move forward with this motion, leaving it up to the Park Board.
Funding for lifeguard services in future years will have to be discussed in the Park Board’s 2027 budgeting process.
Lifeguards will be on duty starting on May 18 from noon to 8 p.m, with hours changing in August as the sun sets earlier.
Read more about Vancouver’s public beaches online.