The committee of volunteers responsible for running the Fort Coulonge arena has been hard at work over the winter to find creative ways to finance high price-tag expenses that have come up in the past year, and this month, that work has started paying off.

After a season of costly but critical repairs, Christine Bourque, vice-president of the Centre de Loisir des Draveurs Century 21 Élite arena committee, was happy to share the arena has secured both substantial funding for upgrades to its upstairs hall, as well as a set of new boards that will be used to replace the almost 60-year-old boards currently in place.

Bourque explained that during the repair work that was done to the indoor rink last fall when the compressor system and piping under the ice had to be replaced, contractors found the arena boards were also on their last legs.

“Our boards are from 1967, and when we were getting the [renovation] work done, the company found the bottoms were disintegrating,” Bourque said. “The problem is, brand new boards are $100,000.”
But lo and behold, Bourque’s husband happened to come across a set of 20-year-old boards from an Arnprior arena that were up for auction.

“We thought, ‘We can’t really afford it, but we also can’t afford not to,’” Bourque said, explaining the committee had just had to spend an unexpected $90,000 to replace the piping system below the ice, which it only discovered to be failing after it had just installed its brand-new, $350,000 compressor refrigeration system.

It had not budgeted for having to purchase new boards, but the fateful discovery of Arnprior’s old boards, combined with a recent $8,000 donation from Pontiac MNA André Fortin’s office, made the purchase just barely possible.

“With taxes in, we were the successful bidders and we were able to buy [the boards] for $16,000,” Bourque said, pride in her voice.

It took committee president Stéphane Béland three trips to Arnprior to transport the boards back to Mansfield’s municipal garage, where they’ll live until they can be installed at the end of the hockey season.
Federal funding for upstairs hall

The new boards are just one of the many updates the committee is planning for arena over the coming months.

In March, the arena was one of 42 community organizations across the Outaouais to receive federal funding for projects that encourage community-based initiatives for seniors.

The arena committee received $25,000 from the New Horizons for Seniors Program to update the arena’s upstairs hall to be more accommodating to seniors.

“We thought this might be a chance for us to provide different activities for a different group of people that don’t necessarily use the arena, and that is senior citizens,” Bourque said.

“We talked in our grant proposal about making the upstairs hall more comfortable, having chairs and tables, and doing board games, cribbage, darts, [to make it] somewhere where senior citizens would be able to come on a daily basis and have different activities.”

Suzanne Dazé from the Jeunes de coeur committee at Le Patro de Fort-Coulonge/Mansfield said that these types of spaces are always important for the community.

“Of course spaces like that could be useful to get people out and get people doing activities,” Dazé said.

“[Seniors] are the people that need to be entertained and need to come out and socialize. That’s why we have the Jeunes de Coeur.”

She was worried, however, that the space being upstairs could pose accessibility challenges to seniors.

“If it’s upstairs, sometimes I even have trouble,” Dazé said. “With the older people, because they have to climb up the stairs, it might be challenging.”

Bourque’s hope is that more grants down the road will enable the committee to add heating and cooling systems to the upstairs hall to moderate its temperature year-round, and to install some way to make it more accessible to people with less mobility.

“I do think that if we are a four-season facility, and are able to check a lot of boxes in the community for the people that we reach,” Bourque said.

“We would be in a much better space to say we are an organization that provides services not only to young families with hockey but year round programming to senior citizens. The more activities we have, the more we do, I think the better shape we’re in when we’re asking for funding.”