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Gleneagles Update June 2
News and Events
New Court Hours for Murdo
From DNV June 2, 2025:
“Staff are taking an incremental approach to addressing the ongoing concerns about pickleball generated noise. The first step will be to limit hours of play in the evening to lessen the impact on adjacent neighbours this summer. The Parks Rangers will actively close the courts at posted times and liaise with NSPC members to reduce the number of people at the courts at one time and share the new operating hours.
DNV staff will continue to monitor the Murdo Fraser pickleball situation and any feedback from the neighbours to see if any future operational changes will be necessary. We continue our work to secure additional spaces for pickleball in the District, including at William Griffin.“
NSPC recognizes the impact of these new hours on working players and continues to be in dialogue with DNV Council and Staff on other solutions.
Sport Court Fees Coming to Ambleside
UPDATE: The Mayor withdrew this proposal before it went to WV Council.
March 9, 2025
To West Vancouver Mayor and Council,
Re: Sport Court Fees
Congratulations again on the four new excellent courts at Ambleside. While only open since October, these courts are much appreciated. Maintenance by volunteers all winter have made them accessible in all but the worst weather, keeping seniors and others active.
Since the announcement of this fee proposal, I have received expressions of shock and sorrow from pickleball players.
- That the friendly, community-building drop-in culture of outdoor pickleball is being eliminated at Ambleside;
- That there might be fees on outdoor courts where overhead is so much lower;
- That the replacement courts for the 29th St. location are not as promised;
- That the community hasn’t been canvassed on this issue;
- That those who sweep, squeegee and otherwise voluntarily care for the courts, keeping it open and available for play for many more days, are being dismissed;
- That a “trial” must run an entire summer, May to October, from sunup to sundown;
- That despite pickleball’s culture of inclusivity, West Vancouver would exclude community partners like North Vancouver.
Fees and Booking
While on paper the proposed fee seems not excessive, may I remind Council and staff that you have a ParticiPaction-winning community of healthy seniors here, who all look forward to summer outdoor play, often 4 to 6 times a week. To longtime taxpaying seniors, this cost for an outdoor facility is excessive and an affront.
They remind me that these four courts are the replacement that was promised when the 29th St. pickleball courts were closed in 2021.
For players, online booking is painful and something everyone is happy to be done with after the winter season. For your booking system it will be a huge added challenge to process, not just the additional hundreds of reservations weekly, but also the refunds when the weather turns.
The alternative: the less accessible, must drive to Normanby courts, and North Vancouver courts where all have been welcomed all along. Players will go where there’s a community of players, not just empty courts.
You may have heard that Sport Court fees are under consideration in North Vancouver. That is for club-permitted time and not general public play. In recognition of the community service provided by the clubs, the hourly court rate is expected to be far less than that proposed in this bylaw.
Outstanding Questions
- How can youth drop in during the summer holiday months? Youth are readily incorporated into the game by adult players and are becoming among our best!
- What about the costs to WV Parks for staffing the courts and cleaning and drying them on a daily basis?
- How do new players get welcomed to the sport and get helped with the learning curve? Experienced players who welcome newbies into the next rotation are teaching the culture that makes pickleball so attractive.
- Isn’t it too early to worry about over-demand? Many new locations are very busy at prime times until players better assess demand patterns and find playing times and alternate locations that work for them.
- What will be the impact of new courts coming to Capilano Mall this summer? The District of North Vancouver is also exploring the addition of more courts.
Club Hosting
Is there a place for club-hosted play like that provided at 29th St prior to the pandemic? The NSPC is once again offering to host at few hours a week at Ambleside. Club volunteers would:
- Provide a welcoming presence at the courts and ensure that beginners and others alike have an enjoyable experience.
- eliminate the need for paid WV staff for the hours of the club permit,
- Continue to offer cleaning care to the courts,
- Pay a fee to West Vancouver for those hours of permitted play,
- Place an AED at the court during the summer season.
NSPC membership is only $15 annually for youth and seniors aged 80+ and provides insurance. Hundreds of West Vancouver residents are or have been members.
We hope the many costs of this proposal to the pickleball community is clearer now and that this Sport Court Fee proposal is rejected.
Estha Parg Murenbeeld
On behalf of the North Shore Pickleball Club
Surviving A Cardiac Arrest
To dispel any rumours circulating about my health or what may have happened to me recently, I thought I’d offer up the facts as I presently know them. I had a sudden cardiac arrest on February 4th down in Palm Desert while playing pickleball. Cardiac arrest means my heart stopped pumping and I stopped breathing. By all accounts I have a big healthy heart from a lifetime of being active. My resting heart rate is low, there is no threatening plaque build up, no valve issues, good high pumping fraction etc. I only know all this now because of all the attention my heart got, first at the Eisenhower Hospital in Rancho Mirage and later, after being flown home, at St. Paul’s in Vancouver.
I had been quite sick through most of December and half of January with some of the various viruses that were circulating on the North Shore at the time. I’d no sooner got over the first when the second showed up. Who knows these days, but I think it was what I would call a chest cold in December – coughed myself silly for four weeks – followed by the flu, with a fever, for two weeks in mid-January. I tested for COVID but it showed negative. My flu and COVID vaccines were up to date.
My arrest was a bit of a mystery until St. Paul’s did a 90 minute very detailed scan of my heart on their new high tech MRI machine. This revealed scarring in a ventricle wall. The scarring indicated myocarditis, likely triggered by an inflammation from one of my recent viral infections. Because the ventricle walls transmit the electrical signals needed for the heart’s rhythmic beating, this finding strongly suggested that I had been felled by a deadly arrhythmia, or ineffective heart rhythm.
The survival rate for sudden cardiac arrests outside of hospital settings is already very low, in the range of 10-15%. Throw in the fact no paramedics arrived for a very long time after the arrest and the survival rate plummets to something well below 1%.
How did I get so lucky? That day I had a guardian angel named Margo, a woman who coached and taught at the nearby aquatic centre. She had just recently updated her first aid qualifications, including a refresher course on CPR. Margo, who was playing a few courts over from mine, ran over and immediately took charge of the scene. She told someone to call 911, got someone else to go look for an AED in the nearby recreational facilities, and then commenced CPR, ultimately recruiting a couple of other players to help. After quite a while (it has been suggested 10 minutes or so) they resuscitated me for a brief period (perhaps 45 seconds or so) before I had a second arrest. Margo and her helpers resumed CPR for a few more minutes until an AED arrived, was set up, and almost immediately delivered a shock that fully resuscitated me. An ambulance arrived moments later. I was unconscious from the time I first arrested until slowly becoming aware that I was in an ambulance . This part of the story has been reconstructed from Margo and others that observed it.
Ultimately, St. Paul’s installed an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) which detects and works to stop irregular heart rhythms from setting up and, if it fails at that, will deliver a shock to my heart to establish a proper rhythm. I’ll be out of commission for at least 3 months to rest and heal. I’m to avoid all vigorous exercise so while you may see me at the courts, I won’t be playing on the courts for a while.
Here are a few of the lessons I’m taking away from this incident:
– buy the best travel insurance you can when you leave the country. I bought a TuGo policy from a broker. Two days after an arrhythmia stopped my heart (twice), the insurer contended I had stabilized, in that I had not had a third arrest in 48 hours, and they wanted me to buy my own plane ticket home to seek any further medical attention there. Thankfully, my doctors at Eisenhower told TuGo that their plan was ridiculous and that they would never discharge me without a safe plan to get me home. They defined this as having my heart monitored every step of the way by medical professionals, with access to an AED, and having me delivered home right into a hospital bed in a cardiology unit.
– before you leave the country, search out the name and number of a lawyer that you can call if your insurance company tries to bully you and play hardball when you are vulnerable and in a hospital bed. Luckily, I have daughter who works as a paralegal for a personal injury lawyer. TuGo agreed to air ambulance me home after the briefest contact with my lawyer.
– every pickleball court should have an AED within a minute or two’s reach (ie at the courts at all times). Unfortunately, AEDs must be locked up (because otherwise they will be stolen) so there must be several signs at the courts saying where the AED is located and the names and phone numbers of several people who know the combination to the lock.
– in the case of the North Shore Pickleball Club, it should place AED’s at all court complexes on the North Shore, regardless of whether the Club offers permitted play on those courts or not. Your members play on all those courts.
– The NSPC should also continue to sponsor basic training in CPR and AED operation, with refresher courses annually, and promote members to take such courses.
– The NSPC should also determine the address of all the pickleball courts and complexes on the North Shore and add signage at these courts to indicate what specific address and general location callers should give when they call 911. I have now watched at one cardiac incident, and participated at another (mine) where paramedics were delayed because no street address was provided to them.
Thanks to all my pickleball friends, including the friends I didn’t even know I had that were at the court complex where I went down (I didn’t know anyone there) who have expressed concern and support for me and Linda throughout this ordeal.
Dan Schroeter
New/2025 Courts for West Vancouver
West Vancouver Staff and the Roundtable are proceeding to build more dedicated pickleball courts in WV. To help inform this process the NSPC was able to survey West Vancouver pickleball players who were NSPC members between 2023 and today on their preferred location, 3 new courts at Gleneagles or 4 more courts at Ambleside.
The survey was sent out the Thursday January 30, successfully delivered to 255 email addresses and opened by 202 individuals. By closing the night of Sunday Feb 3, the survey received 103 responses, i.e. 50%. We did not collect email addresses of respondents to make access easier for people who do not have Google accounts.
This survey was able to make explicit that the location of the proposed Gleneagles courts was on the dirt bike park and would not replace the skateboard bowls. See diagram below.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
The Proposed GLENEAGLES Location
The AMBLESIDE Location
