Opinion: Sport and recreation infrastructure is essential infrastructure

I grew up in Calgary. I played soccer at the indoor soccer centre and watched my brother play hockey at Stu Peppard, Frank McCool and Murray Copot arenas. I learned to swim at Canyon Meadows pool. Every Tuesday was family night at the Southland Leisure Centre wave pool, back when Tim Hunter’s face was plastered on the side of the building.

Those places were part of growing up here. For many of us, they still are. But in 1990, just under 700,000 people lived in Calgary. Midnapore and Sundance felt like the southern edge of the city and Signal Hill was the western edge.

Today, Calgary has more than twice that population. Yet, 70 per cent of our public recreation facilities are more than 35 years old. A growing city needs more than houses and roads. It needs places where people can play, move and belong.

You do not have to think of yourself as a “sports person” for this to matter. Maybe you walk, run, swim or practise yoga. Maybe you play hockey, soccer or badminton. Maybe you coach, volunteer or spend your weekends watching your kids or grandkids.

These places belong to Calgarians from every walk of life and all ages. We all need places to play. And we are running out of room.

Sport Calgary’s community sport research documented more than 57,000 wait-listed participants in 2025/26. That does not capture the invisible wait lists created by program caps and registration closures. More than 90 per cent of the sport organizations surveyed identified facility deficits as their No. 1 barrier to growth, with more than 80 per cent operating at or near capacity.

The cost of a lack of investment in the next four-year budget cycle is inaccessibility, not inconvenience. Think about moving to, or living in, a city where you simply cannot get into community sport. You can’t get into swimming lessons, your child is turned away from community basketball and wait listed for gymnastics.

So many people are already experiencing this.

We are pushing girls out of sport, kids away from programming and people of all ages away from opportunities to be active. Families travel to other cities for competitions we do not have the facilities to accommodate here.

These places provide both a place to work and a place to play.

Wait lists are warnings. Capacity constraints become capped registrations. Eventually, we have a system where children and people simply cannot access community sport.

There is a health cost, too. Canadian research estimates that physical inactivity costs approximately $3.9 billion annually in health-related costs. A 10-percentage-point reduction in physical inactivity among Canadian adults could save approximately $629 million a year. These are national figures, but they reinforce why access to sport and recreation matters well beyond the pool, rink or playing field.

I am proud of how innovative Calgarians have been. We play in school gyms and warehouses, before school at 6:30 a.m. and on weekends before the sun rises. We have turned helicopter pads into basketball courts and school hallways into active learning commons.

Sport matters to us. We find a way.

But finding a way does not mean we have enough. There is no denying we are behind. Calgarians deserve more, whether they watched these facilities open or moved here yesterday.

This November, city council will make decisions on Calgary’s 2027–30 budget. The City of Calgary’s GamePLAN gives us a direction. Council has already adopted its Making Waves service level.

Now we need investment to renew aging facilities, add capacity and move projects forward.

There are many priorities in a growing city. Sport and recreation infrastructure needs to be among them. Sport and recreation infrastructure is essential infrastructure.

If you agree, add your name to Sport Calgary’s pledge page at KeepCalgaryPlaying.ca and share the message.

I love spending time in the facilities I grew up in. But it is time our children had places to play in that opened for their generation, too.

Candice Goudie is president of Sport Calgary.