Aging infrastructure closes down Bells Corners dive pool for the summer

For as long as she can remember, Bells Corners resident Natalie Patrick’s summers have been spent in the water at the Entrance Outdoor Pool. 

The longtime local grew up just a few blocks away after her mother bought their condominium in 1988. As the daughter of a single parent who worked long hours, the outdoor pool became more than somewhere to cool off. It was where she spent entire summer days splashing around with friends, packing lunches, playing volleyball, swimming until closing time and building the kinds of childhood memories that still stay with her decades later.

Years later, after returning to Bells Corners to raise her own daughter, Patrick found herself reliving many of those same moments.

She still remembers watching her then four-year-old nervously make her way to the diving boards, first on the smaller board wearing a puddle jumper, then eventually gathering enough courage to leap from the higher one.

“She passed the swim test, and then she jumped off that diving board, and she was so happy,” Patrick recalled in an interview with the Ottawa Lookout. “It was that look — ‘I did it.’ You can never replace that look.”

Another summer, a City of Ottawa lifeguard noticed her daughter struggling to dive and took time to coach her through the technique.

Those memories won’t be recreated this summer.

The City of Ottawa has closed the Entrance Pool dive tank for the entire 2026 season after winter damage revealed worsening structural deterioration. While the main swimming pool remains open, city staff determined the diving area could not safely operate after discovering new cracking, concrete spalling and erosion around the deck structure.