Without fail, Jamie Watson of Ka’ana Wave Co is the first to tell you that the company is on a mission to make surfing accessible. While this may sound like a broad and open-ended statement, it’s well-supported by Ka’ana’s approach to design, which is guided by principles learned from decades in the snowboard and skateboard industries. While the company appears to challenge convention at every turn, it’s Ka’ana’s simple, thoughtful approach that helps them create unique and compelling surf park concepts for clients around the globe. On the eve of several new announcements from the company, WavePoolMag spoke with Jamie to learn more about Ka’ana’s approach to everything-surf design and how this approach was used to drive the design process for a new boutique surf park and Nordic spa project in British Columbia. 

The projects that you have been working on all seem very different from one another. Why is this?

Yes, since we launched the CM7-Series in 2022, we’ve been invited to work with some great people on some unique and compelling projects. Our technology can be installed in a variety of pools and lagoons. This has allowed architects, design teams, and clients the freedom to think outside the box with the surf feature on their master plans. It’s sometimes hard to imagine the possibilities, so we often invest time early in design to help create a concept for surf that is super cool for that specific project.

How do you create a unique and compelling surf park experience? 

I don’t think you should try. Just recognize that you’re not working with a blank canvas. Every location, every property, every client, every surf technology has its nuances, its strengths, and its challenges. I think that being unique and compelling comes from how well you deal with the paint on the canvas. Unique are the nuances. Compelling are the solutions… If they are good.

You broke ground on a surf park in Bridal Falls, BC this summer. What are some of the nuances with this project?

Bridal Falls is a recreation area 1-hour 20-minutes east of Vancouver on the Trans-Canada highway. About 4 million vehicles pass by every year. Located at the eastern point of the Fraser Valley, it’s close to one of the fastest-growing communities in BC. It’s also the last convenient stop before you leave the flat farmlands of the Fraser Valley for the steep mountains of the Northern Cascades. The property itself has a waterpark and an adjoining RV resort, which packs out with young families all summer, but lacks the amenities to attract 4-season visitation and engage a broader demographic. It’s a deciduous location. It blossoms in the spring and comes into full bloom as a bustling tourist destination throughout the summer months. Then it sheds its leaves in the fall and hibernates for the winter. It’s the Pacific Northwest. It gets dark, cold, and dreary in the winter, and it’s below the snow line, so there’s no compelling reason to be there.

So that’s the paint on this canvas. Sounds like a surf park would do well in the summer. 

Yes, a surf park will crush it in the summer, but there’s an opportunity to foster 4-season economic growth for the landowner and for the Fraser Valley Regional District if we can solve this dark, cold, and dreary problem.

The CM7-Series has a small footprint and fits in a pool. Do you go indoors with this park?

We need to figure out how we’re going to attract people to this venue 12 months a year, how to make this a 4-season destination. We need to solve this problem, but let’s not default to an indoor experience. Not here. Let’s lean into it. You can do a million things indoors throughout the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Let’s keep people outdoors. If we do it well, this could be a more compelling experience.

How do you deal with dark, cold, and dreary, to create a compelling outdoor experience?

For this venue, we anchored the park with a CM7-Surf pool and Nordic spa amenities. Surf and spa attract different people at different times of year. The CM7-Surf pool is an active, outdoor watersports experience for surfing, whitewater kayaking, swim training, and play. The hot tubs and saunas of the Nordic spa complement this, especially in the cold winter months when we expect surf participation to drop off. The Nordic spa also provides an experience for a broader, less-active demographic that’s just looking to relax and unwind. My wife and I might travel for a surf with the kids; their grandparents might come along for the spa. 

The surf/spa combination seems like a good way to winter-proof the surf park and add value for the landowner. As a destination, do you expect there will be peak and off-peak periods?

If the surf and spa experience is compelling, we can attract people to the venue 12 months a year. Like any destination though, we can expect visitation will peak on the weekends and throughout the spring, summer, and winter holidays. Rather than accept that destinations have off-peak periods, let’s lean into it. Let’s design this venue for the off-peak periods. Remember that we’re close to a fast-growing community, so let’s design this park for the locals. Let’s make this a Community Surf and Social Club for the Fraser Valley. All ages, skills, and abilities. 

How do you make a destination/community surf club work?

Interestingly, community sports programming and destination visitation dovetail quite nicely. Community sports are typically programmed around the school calendar year. They wrap up for the spring, summer, and winter breaks so families can go away on vacation. That’s when the destination programming kicks back in.

Is the community big enough to support a community surf park?

I think so. It takes a smaller population to sustain a surf park if more of that population comes to that park, so if we want to bring surfing to a smaller community, we need to engage more people in that community. The CM7-Series does the heavy lifting here. We designed CM7 to shape a variety of waves for surfing, but when we launched the product, we learned that the CM7 is also fun and useful for a variety of activities like whitewater kayaking and open-water swim training. So, let’s create sports programming for these activities. If we do it well, we can attract wider demographic, and at off-peak times. We’ll likely convert some non-surfers in the process. 

How do you convert non-surfers?

Inclusion is a funny thing. If you don’t identify with surfing for whatever reason, you might never set foot in a surf park. If we can get you to show up for a thing that you do identify with and already do, there’s a better chance that we can get you interested enough to try this super fun thing that you didn’t identify with and don’t already do. I think inclusion is a powerful and effective way to foster participation and build community. 

With the surf park on a busy highway, do you think that people will see the sign and pull off for a surf? 

I think there’s a great opportunity to pull in traffic off the highway because Bridal Falls is the last convenient stop before you head into the mountains. I think it’s a challenge to think that we’ll pull in much traffic for some new experience that was introduced into existence on a signboard 5km back down the road.

What are you doing to address that issue?

It’s more realistic to think that we can pull you for a stretch or a bite. So, let’s create a lively pit-stop for travelers on highway 1. Let’s make a public access patio with the lowest possible barrier to entry. Parking lot to patio, like a fruit stand on the side of the road. It’s a great way to introduce the idea of surfing to the broadest audience possible, and it’s a great way to generate additional revenues through retail, food, and beverage. We might not hook you in for a surf the first time, but we can get you to come check it out, have a bite, snap a photo, and plant the seed for next time. 

Given carte blanche to design any shaped pool or lagoon, why design a typical lap pool for this venue?

It’s a bit cheeky and it goes back over 10 years. Our design intent for the CM7-Series was to make surfing more accessible. The question was, how accessible can we make surfing? Well, if we could shape waves in a community pool, then we could bring surfing to a lot of people. With this in mind, and because other projects are going way outside the box with the CM7 drawn into canyons, rivers, and lagoons, we thought we should have some fun with a typical community pool for this venue.

How big is the pool?

We did a 110’ x 50’ Myrtha pool for this venue. You can see in the renderings that we added lane markers for swim-training. We made this section of the pool conform to the regulations for length, breadth, and depth made by World Aquatics, formerly FINA. With a bulkhead installed, you can actually host competition swimming here. The pool is 8’ deep on the surf end and 4’ deep on the shallow end.  The shallow end functions as a leisure zone for guests to lounge in while others in their group are surfing. 

I remember that. When you bail, the currents take you to the shallow end of the pool, or you can swim to the side and catch the current back.

Yes, and it’s cool to high five your kids or your friends every couple minutes if you’re hanging out in the shallow end. Sometimes it’s nice to take a minute, pull up your boardies, and catch your breath in the shallows before you paddle back in the return currents, as well. 

Will you heat the water?

The pool mechanical is designed to heat the pool to 28c/82ff. I’m not sure that we need to run that hot, though. The CM7’s pumps create heat, too. I’m interested to see how the pumps affect the water temperature throughout the year.

And you’ve added an acrylic wall on one side of the pool, aquarium style. What’s the goal?

We’ve always talked about how cool it would be to watch this “thing” from below the surface. How cool would it be to watch people bail? What do the waves look like, what’s the water doing? There’s an entertainment factor with this and there’s a lot we could learn. We’ve never really chased it, though. Then we stumbled across this place in Spain where they coach swimming in a flume from behind an acrylic wall. The CM7-Series can produce a laminar flow like this, so we asked around the BC and Canadian swim community to see if this would be useful for them. Would they come out and coach at the venue? The response was overwhelmingly positive, so with coaching now in the fold, this novel acrylic wall became a necessity. Taking this design element one step further, we made the guest’s journey into the park start as you walk through this little canyon path up past the acrylic wall. We thought this would be cool to create a bit more separation between the public access patio and the ticketed surf park, better for the experience overall.

When you launched at South Britannia, you created a boathouse, dock vibes experience for people queueing up to drop in. How is Bridal Falls the same, or different?

The dock vibes were super cool at Britannia. It’s a similar climate at Bridal Falls so for the surf experience outside the water, we did boathouse here, too. We added infrared heaters, in addition to the marine speakers, board racks, and suspended operator console, this time. Air temperature is a pain point on a cold day, even in a wetsuit. We brought the dock off the back wall to create a better out-on-the-dock experience, as well. 

Are there new developments with your wave shapes?

Yes, we’ll open the venue with three new wave shapes, which we designed in response to feedback from our first waves at South Britannia. Bridal Falls is a 20-minute drive from our manufacturing partner, so we’ll use this facility to test and showcase new shapes, as well. Then we’ll continue to release new shapes over the coming years to keep the experience fresh and give people a reason to come back often.

Unique are the nuances. Compelling are the solutions… 

It’s a fun and rewarding process. You can see it in our CM7-Series, too. Our design intent for the CM7 was to make surfing most accessible, so the process began with the question, how do we share surfing with the most people? In this case, we said that we need to create a variety of fun, dynamic, deepwater waves to engage the most people, and we need to do this in an existing body of water like a community pool, to make this more feasible in small communities. That’s why the CM7-Series is as you see it today. No hype just a unique and fun surf experience born from the creative solutions to a specific problem.

Did you have a specific list of achievements as an end goal during the design process?

We use purpose, mission, and values to guide our decision-making. This brings heart to our work and helps us push past the easy solutions to get the compelling solutions. With Bridal Falls, for example, it’s plain to see that we’ve designed a surf park. If you dig a bit deeper you can see the design intent, which evolved with our understanding of the project; an intent to help to develop community sports and foster 4-season economic growth for these particular stakeholders. With a surf park, our mission is to build community, support inclusion, and foster growth through participation in sport. Have we designed this park by these values? I think we have.

Who are you working with for design on this project?

We’re working with some great partners on this project. The design team includes our manufacturing partner AdvanTec Global, Cloward H2O, Myrtha Pools, Select Contracts, Tom Barratt Landscape Architects, Rafael Santa Ana Architecture Workshop, and Krahn Engineering.

When can we expect to go surfing?

We broke ground in June and we’re aiming to have the first phase open in late Spring, 2025. We’ll keep you updated over the coming months.

This article was produced as part of a marketing partnership with Ka’ana Wave Co.

Why wave variety is important and how it’s done

Ka’ana Wave Co. partners with Crystal Lagoons for worldwide distribution and installation