Her city was short on lifeguards, so this 70-year-old answered the call
Robin Borlandoe wants to help keep pools open and her community safe
A lot has changed since the last time Robin Borlandoe worked as a lifeguard at 16.
"We didn't get paid for it during that time, it was just the love of the sport," she told As It Happens guest host Robyn Bresnahan.
Borlandoe, now 70 and a grandmother of six, decided to come out of retirement and go through the certification process to help with the ongoing shortage of lifeguards in her city of Philadelphia.
"Last year, I wasn't ready because I had to train. And then I heard about [the shortage] this year and decided to go for it," she said. "And the training is very, very intense."
Lifeguard shortage across the U.S. and Canada
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, only 50 of Philadelphia's 65 pools are open this summer due to the lack of lifeguards and swimming instructors.
A similar problem exists across the U.S. and Canada: in Ottawa and St. John's, swimming lessons were cancelled and pool capacities were reduced this month, with municipal authorities citing lifeguard shortages as the main reason. Nova Scotia and P.E.I. struggled to fill lifeguard vacancies to supervise many of the East Coast beaches.
Barbara Byers, public education director at the Lifesaving Society of Canada, said the current lifeguard shortage is fuelled by a number of factors, including low wages, lapsed certification and higher-paying opportunities in other industries.
"In some municipalities, some pools are opening, not all pools. Some pools are opening for limited hours. Some beaches don't have lifeguards that normally would, some with fewer hours and fewer days," Byers told As It Happens in a phone interview.
"Many municipalities are reaching out to other groups for potential candidates. They're approaching people who maybe were a lifeguard back in the day and they moved out to another field, or maybe they took time off and had children, and convincing them to come back and recertify."
For Borlandoe, returning to work as a lifeguard is also about keeping children safe and away from violence. More than 100 children under 18 have been shot in Philadelphia this year, and 24 of them died. Borlandoe said three young men were killed in her neighborhood last year.
"Our kids have no future. They're getting killed. They're killing each other," she said. "And so this was just a small way for me to do something to help out, keep the kids off the block."
She said that in addition to giving young people a place to hang out, keeping the public pools open year-round can also help train future lifeguards and avoid shortages. "It's just protecting these kids and letting them see that they have something else out here. There's opportunities for them, but they have to open the pools."
In the meantime, Borlandoe is doing her part to keep the pool open.
"I always tell my kids: go out there and make a statement no matter what it is. So for this, no matter how old, if you want to do it, don't give up."
Written by Olsy Sorokina. Interview with Robin Borlandoe produced by Tayo Bero.
