"If Silver Creek can do it, so can we."
This is how Salmon Arm youth Logan Drolet ended a letter to Salmon Arm Mayor Alan Harrison asking for an outdoor hockey rink to be built in Salmon Arm. Drolet referred to the Silver Creek Community Park rink, one of the volunteer-operated outdoor skating rinks within the Columbia Shuswap Regional District (CSRD) that opens weather permitting.
In the letter, Drolet said there is nowhere in the city to skate or play hockey for free, while the one in Silver Creek is a "long drive from my house and sometimes the roads are bad in winter."
"I just want to have fun with my friends playing hockey but there's no place to do that here," wrote Drolet. "There's a public skate at the arena but you can't play hockey."
The letter was received at the Dec. 9 city council meeting. In response, Coun. Debbie Cannon noted this wasn't the first time interest in an outdoor hockey rink has been shared with council.
"When I was on the Fair board, we even actually looked into it… Jim McEwan looked into it a bit and got some numbers of maybe putting something… on the fairgrounds," said Cannon. "With the weather that we have now, I think having an outdoor rink you pretty much have to have the infrastructure with the pipes in there, and of course that comes at quite a cost.
"I think it’s something that has been looked at and something I think would be well used in our community, but it’s definitely a want and we have some other wants too so."
Cannon shared her appreciation for the letter, saying it was really well written, and "I think it’s great when we get youth from our community giving us their ideas."
The letter prompted some reflection on positive past experiences with outdoor rinks. Coun. Sylvia Lindgren recalled "happy memories" of visits to one at Ear Falls, Ont., and said she thought an outdoor rink "would be a really good addition to our community."
"It would be fabulous," said Lindgren. "I wondered whether or not anybody had any information about how, as Logan mentioned, Silver Creek can do it, so why can’t we. I was just curious if anybody knows how Silver Creek does it?"
Coun. Louise Wallace-Richmond commented on an ice-less rink that she recently saw at Ottawa's ByWard Market.
"I too am from the skate outside in -20 winter world so I would commit to reaching out to them personally to find out what that looks like…," said Wallace Richmond.
To Lindgren's question, Coun. and CSRD director Kevin Flynn said there is a "couple of communities in the regional district that have outdoor rinks when the weather permits."
"It’s set up by volunteers and it’s on tennis courts or things like that," Flynn explained. "No, none of them have pipes, they’re just weather permitting.
"So I appreciate the letter. I definitely understand the want. In my mind it’s not a need and should be added to the list of wants and prioritized based on that list, what’s realistic, what can be done, what can be afforded. I do think as a community perhaps we should be looking at, when the weather permits, some options to use some of our facilities, but I don’t see spending money on an ice plant for an outdoor rink at this point in time."
Harrison and Cannon agreed to work on a written response for Drolet, who had been at the meeting but had to leave for hockey.
