Photo: Luc Rempel

A young boy wrote a letter to the Mayor wondering why Salmon Arm does not have an outdoor winter skating rink.

“There’s no where in Salmon Arm to skate or play hockey for free,” Logan Drolet wrote in a handwritten letter to city hall.

He explained that hockey is not allowed during the public skate at the arena and that leaves few options for playing hockey with his friends.

“There’s an outdoor rink in Silver Creek but that’s a long drive from my house and sometimes the roads are bad in winter,” Drolet said in his letter.

“If Silver Creek can do it, so can we,” he added.

Coun. Debbie Cannon said this is not the first time the issue has come up to council.

“This has been brought up at our council table for several years about having an outdoor hockey rink somewhere in our community, and when I was on the Fair Board, we even actually looked into it,” she explained. “With the weather that we have now, I think having an outdoor rink, you pretty much have to have the infrastructure of the pipes in there and of course, that comes at quite a cost.”

“I think it would be well used in our community, but it's definitely a want and we have some other wants too,” she added.

Coun. Cannon thanked Drolet for the well written letter and said how much she appreciates it when council has the chance to hear from youth in the city.

“I have many happy memories of showing up at our outdoor rink in Ear Falls, Ontario in the middle of minus 25 weather, and shovelling snow off the rink before we could skate,” said Coun. Sylvia Lindgren. “And I don't say that facetiously, it was a great place.”

Coun. Louise Wallace Richmond offered an alternative option for council to consider.

She said when she was in Ottawa at the Byward Market she saw a temporary outdoor rink with a plastic synthetic surface that allowed for skating and playing hockey.

“I would commit to reaching out to them personally to find out what that looks like,” she said. “But it was really quite a delightful thing to see at Byward Market.”

As the Columbia Shuswap Regional District board representative Coun. Kevin Flynn spoke up to explain more about the Silver Creek outdoor skating rink.

“There's a couple different communities in the regional district that have outdoor rinks when the weather permits, and it's set up by volunteers and it's on tennis courts or things like that,” he said. “No, none of them have pipes, they're just weather permitting.”

“In my mind it's not a need, and should be added to the list of wants and prioritized based on that list,” he added.

“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.”

Mayor Harrison and Coun. Wallace Richmond agreed to reach out to Drolet with council's response to his letter.

The Silver Creek outdoor rink is not yet open for the season and is expected to open once the weather is consistently cold enough to maintain the ice sheet.