Gorge Swim Fest is slated to make a comeback at Banfield Park today, one year after a contamination scare forced its last-minute cancellation.
The event gets under way at 11:45 a.m., and organizers hope it once again draws attention to the Gorge as a great place to take a dip — right in the heart of the city.
“We like to say it’s the cleanest swimming hole in the Victoria area,” said Jack Meredith, president of the Gorge Swim Fest Society. “And that’s what the data confirm.”
Despite last year’s scare, Island Health beach reports regularly show that sites along the Gorge are microbiologically safe for swimming, he said.
“A large part of our message is: ‘The Gorge is clean enough to swim in. Come down and enjoy swimming in it, and keep your eyes open for anybody that’s doing anything that would threaten that.’ ”
Organizers were forced to pull the plug on the 2017 event after “significant” contamination was found in a creek that flows under Craigflower Road and empties into the Gorge Waterway.
The problem was later traced to improperly connected pipes at a nearby property that resulted in wastewater intended for sewer pipes flowing through stormwater pipes and into the creek.
It was a disappointing setback for Swim Fest organizers, who have been fighting for years against the notion that the Gorge is heavily polluted, despite successful efforts by the Veins of Life Watershed Society and others to clean up the waterway years ago.
“There was this fear that if people keep throwing stuff into the Gorge it could go into decline,” Meredith said. “So I started to talk to people and say: ‘The Gorge is clean and it’s warm. You should come down and swim.’
“And every second person would say: ‘No, it isn’t. It’s dirty. It’s filthy. You’re crazy. And it’s cold, it’s ocean water.’
“That caused me to worry more and say: ‘Well, if people have that in their mind that it is polluted, then they won’t be diligent in keeping it clean.’ ”
Meredith said Swim Fest was started, in part, to change people’s attitudes and beliefs, promote the Gorge as a warm, clean swimming hole and resurrect it as the “summer resort” that it once was.
“Literally, thousands of people would come down here back in the late 1800s, early 1900s,” he said. “It was Victoria’s beach.”
Robin Rombs, who lives in Vic West and helps organize a monthly year-round swim club at the Banfield Park jetty, believes the Gorge’s popularity is on the increase once again.
“This time of year, you come down any morning, afternoon or evening, there are anywhere from two to 25 people on the dock,” he said.
“I’ve lived next door to the park for five and a half years, and it has just become a real neighbourhood hub, a real meeting place.” City planners try to create such spots. “But this is just naturally one.”
Rombs said he, too, has become passionate about promoting swimming in the Gorge as a way to protect it.
“It’s such a treasure right in the heart of our city, and I think if people swim in it, then it matters to them,” he said. “If you use it, you care about it.”
