New Tecumseth Unveils Indoor Pool After Admin Building Saga Revealed To Be Massive Prank

ALLISTON, ONTARIO—A new administration building has been at the centre of heated debate for the better part of a decade in the township of New Tecumseth. June 3rd will mark the inaugural opening and tour of the building's premises, which, to the surprise of many, will feature a twenty-five-metre swimming pool.

“It’s not at all an admin building,” said Marsha Gibbons, a local resident who recently uncovered the truth after opening an unlocked door while looking for a public washroom. “It’s change rooms, a foyer, and a pool. They had us going this entire time. Those sweethearts were pulling our legs.”

While the current council, elected in 2022, is comprised mostly of people who stood against the project, the previous council voted in favour of it, but only after several private meetings. These meetings are now understood to have been where the massive surprise and practical joke was first conceived.

On the subject of those early off-camera meetings, one anonymous member of the former council had this to say: “We realized, ‘no one wants this,’ and then we got to thinking, what DO people want? Everyone looked around the table, and we all said, ‘Pool!” at the same time. I was so excited I stood up and yelled ‘CANNONBALL' and, well, I guess the rest is history."

The idea to keep it all a secret became both a source of camaraderie and an obsession for certain council members. 

“We drew straws to decide who had to be in favour of the admin building,” said a second anonymous member of the former council. “At one point, some of my colleagues got so into the prank that I told them, ‘Listen, you could lose the next election over this,” but they didn’t mind. They said it’d all be worth it when they saw the looks on all those happy swimmers' faces.”

Of course, keeping the secret from the town proved to be the most difficult undertaking of all. Contractors and construction workers had to sign non-disclosure agreements and rooms within the renovated building were sectioned off to avoid too many people knowing about the pool. Many contractors were chosen from out of town to minimize the risk of rumours about the secret pool. 

“We started thinking, ‘There’s no way people believe this. They’ve got to be onto us, I mean, why would we spend all this money on an admin building when families are scraping by with an outdoor pool that’s only open a few months of the year? It's just unbelievable,” a third anonymous council member said. “ We thought, surely, someone will see through our scheme, but no one did. I have to say, when that one man started a hunger strike in protest of the admin building, things got a little stressful for me.”

When asked about whether the current council would consider duping the entire town in order to carry out another act of goodwill, one anonymous member said, “Just wait until we open the new ‘water treatment plant.’"