About this site

What this is

A public resource on Vancouver’s swim-lesson system: how long the queue actually is, why it persists, what the neighbouring cities decided differently, and what it would cost to fix. It was built by one Vancouver parent, from records the city released under freedom of information, the four cities’ own registration systems, and eight years of Park Board meeting documents. It is written for parents in the queue, for city and Park Board staff who hold better data than this site does, and for the candidates asking for both groups’ votes in October.

What this isn’t

This is not a campaign for any candidate or party. The queue is not a partisan artifact, as both of Vancouver’s governing bodies voted for the same program (council unanimously, the board five to one) and both let it stall. The ideal outcome of this site is for candidate to understand the challenges the swim program is facing, and compete over who fixes it. This is also not an attack on Park Board staff: the analyses here were built from their releases, and several findings credit expansions they delivered. And it’s not a substitute for the city’s own analysis, it exists because that analysis doesn’t, yet.

Method, in five lines

Documents first: every claim traces to a released record, a public catalogue, or a published report, in the library or linked where it appears. Consistent bases: like is compared with like, and where a basis changes, the page says so. Caveats stay attached: an observational number is labeled one, and the known defects of each dataset are stated where the numbers appear. Corrections in public: the log is a page, it launched non-empty, and it will grow. Replication is invited: the scripts are published, the aggregate data is downloadable, and Park Board staff could rerun everything here against live systems in an afternoon.

The data policy

The aggregate dataset (every activity’s seats, enrolments, and waitlists, 2022–2025) is downloadable in full. The child-level registration extract is available on request to journalists and researchers, or from the City by citing FOI file 2026-507, we chose not to post 151,000 rows about registrants, even anonymized ones, for general download.

Contact

— corrections, records, tips, and requests for the registration extract. If you work inside the system and know where a number on this site is wrong, please send an email.