A citizen was complaining that the installations of an indoor municipal pool were not adequate for elderly people. This pool is located in a patrimonial building built in the ‘30s.
This pool is not equipped with conventional ladders with handles to enter and exit the water, but rather with steps built in the pool’s ceramic walls, on the side of which poles with handles are anchored to the top side of the pool. A special lift is also available at this pool which the employees can use, when needed, to enter or exit people in/out of the pool.
Our investigation showed that the building where the pool is located had recently undergone major renovations during which Arrondissement Le Plateau-Mont-Royal had taken particular care to protect its patrimonial characteristics.
After serious analysis, the Ombudsman de Montréal concluded that the current installations offer adequate access to swimmers, including elderly people or those with reduced mobility, all the while protecting the patrimonial aspect of the building and that the borough had not acted in an arbitrary, unreasonable or discriminatory manner by refusing to install a more traditional ladder, in this pool. It should be noted, moreover, that the narrowness of the basin would have posed serious obstacles to the installation of such a ladder.
