If you are in support of this project then please send a letter to the Town Hall, Like our Facebook page and forward this email to other residents who would be interested in supporting this project. Here is how you can do this:
1. Send a letter to the Town Hall:
If you wish to write a letter it must be addressed to the
Baie D’Urfé Town Council and mailed or dropped off at:
Baie-D’Urfé Town Hall
20410, chemin Lakeshore. Baie-D’Urfé (Québec), Canada, H9X 1P7
** Note: your letter MUST be addressed to the TOWN COUNCIL and not just the mayor and councillors or it may not be tabled.
e-mail your letter to the Town Clerk at
greffe@baie-durfe.qc.ca
The Email addresses of the Mayor and Council members are on this page:
Thank you for supporting The Team Ice/ Équipe Glace Project. If you want to get more involved in this project send us an email and join the team.
Team Ice - Équipe glace - Baie D'Urfé 
As one of the three citizens who in 2007 took the trouble to object in writing to the town’s supporting the extension of the tennis courts on the back of the skaters, I’m very much in favor of improving our skating infrastructure. The need for adequate skating facilities has, however, absolutely nothing to do with the town’s surpluses or the proposed extension of the town hall. The fundamental issue is that the current facilities at Berthold Park are woefully inadequate. They are a disgrace, discourage many from using them and hurt the image of our otherwise beautiful town.
Paul Egli
65 St. Andrews, BD
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Investing and improving residents quality of life is the way to go.
Sandra Mateus
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Judging by the number of emails based on the template referred to by this Webpage and sent to Baie d’Urfe’s Mayor and Town Councilors, the proposal of equipping our town with refrigerated skating facilities is supported by a sizable number of citizens. The agendas for the council meetings of 11 August and 8 September show that the Town has by now received 55 such emails, signed by 67 citizens.
I am convinced that the artificial ice will contribute significantly to enhancing the quality of life in our town and is not the unnecessary extravagance as which opponents like to portray it. Many of us must have skated or taken their children or grandchildren skating on the artificial ice in front of the Beaver-Lake chalet. But not everyone may be aware that the half-dozen hockey rinks built since 2008 in less-privileged neighborhoods, with financing from the Montreal Canadiens Children’s Foundation in the framework of Canadian Tire’s BLEU BLANC BOUGE program, are all refrigerated.
Many towns in the Alps (some with a population much smaller than Baie d’Urfe’s) have in recent years installed refrigerated outdoor rinks, essentially in response to the threat of global warming to their attractiveness as resorts. Unlike these towns, our town does not depend on tourists for its survival, but I would argue that without adequate recreation opportunities for people of all ages we are losing Baie d’Urfe’s attractiveness as a place in which to live and raise a family. The link between a town’s appeal and the preservation of its property values should be evident even to those interested more in low taxes and the accumulation of impressive municipal surpluses than in the quality of public skating facilities.
We must bear in mind though that planning, designing and building the necessary infrastructure will take some time, and I therefore propose that, so as to rapidly achieve a good measure of progress, the initial realization be limited to building the chalet to its definitive design (including provisions to accommodate refrigeration equipment), laying out the rink and free-skating area in their definitive positions, and operating them with natural ice. The proposed initial phase will be difficult and time-consuming enough. Where would the facilities be located? Could some of the necessary features, the parking area and the washrooms for example, be shared with other activities? If the Town has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of its citizens’ recreation needs and developed a plan to meet them, I’m not aware of it.
With winter approaching, I’m afraid we will be stuck with spending another season using (or staying away from) the since 2007 temporary, pitiful arrangement at Berthold Park. To make skating in Baie d’Urfe again an activity enjoyable by all, in the short run the most obvious and simplest way by far, at no extra cost to boot, would be to reactivate the warm-up room integrated expressly for the skaters in the Aquatic Club’s building, set up the hockey rink on the tennis courts (as was the practice in past winters until not too long ago) and flood what remains of Churchill Park for free skating. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why skating was shifted from the Coop area to Berthold Park eight years ago.
Paul Egli
65 St. Andrews, BD
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Thanks very much for your helpful comments, Paul. Good points.
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Believing that if one is in favor of something it is good to know the views of those who oppose it, I took the trouble to request the Town to let me see the correspondence it had received from the citizens who are against the proposed refrigerated-ice project. They were identified in the agendas of the regular council meetings of 11 August and 8 September last.
Here’s what I found. The Town received 6 pieces of correspondence opposing the project, two of which were letters sent by mail. The remaining four were in the form of emails, ranging in detail and scope from one raising a number of questions about the project’s justification and costs to one limited to a single sentence on the message’s subject line, saying something like “I do not support the project without further information.”
The need of more information was indicated or implied in virtually all six communications. Three citizens expressed doubts about the realism of the presented cost estimate, with one of them expecting the total cost to reach $2 million.
Four of the objecting citizens found that there are better ways for the Town to spend its money, one of them enumerating more appropriate possibilities to dispose of the accumulated surplus. Three remarked that the need for the project has not been established.
Two citizens living near Berthold Park would not appreciate the installation of the artificial-ice facilities in that park. One foresees the creation of a “concrete jungle” and the other is concerned that the increased activities would mean the end of what is currently a quiet neighborhood.
When I had thought that the project would be opposed only by non-skaters and people without skating children or grand-children, I was wrong. One of the opponents reports that he plays shinny hockey at the rink in Berthold Park twice I week and estimates that 95% of the other players are from out of town.
While the correspondence brings out a number of valid issues that necessarily need to be addressed during the development of the project, it contains nothing that would make me change the view I expressed in earlier submissions to this webpage, namely that: 1) our first priority should be to request the Town to create conditions for skating at least equivalent to those we enjoyed before Churchill Park was allowed to be destroyed by the tennis club, and 2) if that entails the construction of new facilities, they should be built at their definitive location, to a design incorporating the features necessary for the future installation of the equipment producing artificial ice.
Paul Egli
65 St. Andrews, BD
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