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HomeMy WebLinkAboutClinton News Record, 2013-12-18, Page 22 News Record • Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Bayfield ice users pitch new ideas to council Gerard Creces Clinton News -Record There are other ways to keep the Bayfield Arena ice pad open. Users of the facility spoke to Bluewater Council at a special meeting Dec. 5, talking about what the arena means to them, and pro- posing ways to keep the ice in. Council originally voted to make this the last year for ice in October, after years of sitting on the fence over a 2009 facilities report. With about 23 hours of ice time a week rented out this season, usage is down in Bayfield as compared to other Bluewater arenas. However, it is a slight rebound over last year, which saw only 17.5 hours per week paid ice time, and Bayfield does run the smallest operational deficit of all the Bluewater arenas. Marketing the ice for hockey clinics and overflow time for other organizations could bring more business in the doors, many of the public speakers said. The demand is there for extra ice time in other centres, and Bayfield could pick that business up. Ron Keys has played more than 600 games on the Bayfield ice since he started playing hockey in 1981. A member of the Bayfield Relics men's hockey team, Keys chal- lenged council to find any facility in Bluewater that has a larger age range of ice users. If the size of the ice were increased he said Bayfield could accept overflow from nearby Goderich and Clinton. He came equipped with a con- version plan for the existing Bayfield arena, which included adding removable boards and flooring to cover the ice, increasing the ice size to 75x165 feet, remov- ing the bleachers and doubling the size of the arena dressing rooms. All told, Keys said it would cost $1.1 million, based on quotes he gathered for his presentation. He said council should have been focusing on filling the arena for the seven months of the year when there is no ice. And should expansion prove too much, the small size of the ice and dressing rooms could still be seen as a benefit for minor hockey pro- grams. Because Bayfield is part of the BCH Minor Hockey Associa- tion, ice time is spread across three different communities for its teams. Organizing ice times based on size could be a gain for the village. "It's the perfect size to learn hockey up to Atom age," said coach and arena user Bill Whetstone. "The issue is not cost but a lack of marketing." Whetstone said concentrating smaller teams for smaller ice could bring Bayfield's numbers up, as could holding hockey schools and specialized clinics. Women's hockey representative Stephanie Allen suggested council better utilize their web page to help sell and schedule Bayfield ice time before further taxing already drained service groups for money. Bayfield Councilor Geordie Palmer said it is a case of the municipality not seeing the forest for all the trees, just trying to manage the arenas without actively promoting them, echoing Allen's remark that this should have been happening all along. Early in the meeting, he reminded the gallery that the decision was based on usage, and that council was "not here to shut the whole thing down." Council and the ice user group representatives all agreed that a committee should be struck between council, service clubs and arena users to determine how best to maintain the community asset. However, Mayor Bill Dowson explained their role that night was only to take information from users. A public meeting will be held in early January to present options for the Bayfield ice. Western U website to live feed congratulatory messages Alice Munro of Clinton honoured in Stockholm Alice Munro's daughter went to Stockholm to accept her mother's Nobel Prize in Litera- ture Dec. 10 and her alma mater asked Canadians to show their support and offer congratula- tions on social media. Western University, where Munro studied in the early 1950s and began her writing career, asked Londoners and all Cana- dians to "spread the word" on social media using the hashtag #CelebrateAlice. The university ran a live feed of messages for the writer on their website, www.extraordi- nary.westernu.ca/munro and created a "physical memory" of all the messages that shared with Munro as a gift. Munro's daughter Jenny received the award on her moth- er's behalf. The laureates each receive a diploma, a gold medal and about $1.3 million. The 82 -year-old author is stay- ing at her daughter Sheila's home, too frail to travel. Munro built a career as a writer of short stories, telling tales of the struggles of women in small-town Canada. One of her stories, The Bear Came over the Mountain (2001) was adapted into the Oscar -nomi- nated 2006 movie Away From Her, the directorial debut of Canadian actor Sarah Polley. The Nobel committee called her the "master of the contem- porary short story." "Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov," the Swed- ish Academy said in announc- ing the award on its website, comparing Munro to the 19th - century Russian short story writer. Munro was born in Wingham and lived most of her life in Clin- ton with her second husband, Joanne & Karen Marlene Darlene & Tammy 519-482-7711 Esthetician candismanispedis@hotmail.com (519)441-1026 at terior� ends Oraint owInd "reatments Wish all our family, friends and customers a very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year • Alice Munro Gerald Fremlin, until his death last spring. She then moved to Victoria. Munro married James Munro while at Western in the early 1950s and moved with him to British Columbia where they opened Munro's Books in Victoria, a store still in operation. They had three daughters, Sheila, Catherine (who died 15 hours after birth), and Jenny. They divorced in 1972 and Munro returned to Ontario and to Western as writer -in -residence in 1974. Munro is the second Canadian -born writer to win the Nobel Prize in Litera- ture, although she is the first winner identified as truly Canadian. Saul Bel- low, who won in 1976, was born in Que- bec but raised in Chicago and is widely considered an American writer. BIOGRAPHY Born Alice Ann Laidlaw in Wingham, July 10, 1931. Her fiction has earned three Governor -General's awards (1968, 1978, 1986), two Giller prizes (1998, 2004) and the Man Booker Inter- national Prize for lifetime achievement (2009). After her first marriage to James Munro ended in 1951, Munro returned to West- ern University — where she first started writing fiction as a student in 1950 — and served as writer -in -residence in 1974; in 1976 she married Gerald Fremlin and settled on a farm outside Clinton; Fremlin died in April this year. Munro now lives in Victoria. Munro had three daughters: Sheila (born 1953), Catherine (1955) and Jenny (1957); Catherine died shortly after birth. In 2009, Munro revealed she had been treated for can- cer and undergone heart bypass surgery. Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The Paris Review. Her books include Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), The Progress of Love (1986), Run- away (2004), Too Much Happiness (2009) and Dear Life (2012).