Calls for a return of lifeguards to Thetis Lake have been heard but it won't happen in time for this season.
Mike Hicks, chair of the CRD parks committee says lifeguards were removed from the beach because of the difficulty of finding qualified people and the challenge that the lifeguards faced trying to monitor the beach area and often rowdy groups jumping off the cliffs. "Both those incidents that just happened a lifeguard probably wouldn't have been aware of it."
The CRD stopped supplying lifeguards at Thetis Lake back in 2003 and Hicks also says Thetis isn't the only prime swimming spot in the CRD. "We have Coles Bay; Elk Lake; Matheson Lake; Witty's Lagoon, where do you start, where do you end but we're definitely not afraid to look at it."
The move to re-examine the decision comes after a 26-year-old woman and a couple of foreign students came close to drowning at the cliffs in the last couple of weeks.