In 1935, the municipal rink opened with big celebration
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- Published on Wednesday, November 9, 2016
This story, among others, can be found in Rick Sparling’s latest book, “Amateur Hockey in Neepawa– A Scrapbook” The book is over 730 pages of all of the championship hockey teams and newspaper coverage of the games that took place all the way from the early 1900s up until the arrival of the Junior A Neepawa Natives in 1989.
There is a section dedicated to those who advanced beyond minor hockey as well as a section of tributes, honouring those coaches, managers, media people and builders who made hockey in Neepawa possible. Cheerleaders, stories and girl’s hockey are covered, as well as games in the Tom Thumb, BB, AB, Midget, Junior B, Juvenile and Intermediate divisions.
The book is available through the Neepawa Banner and all profits will be donated to the Beautiful Plains Museum in honour of Allan Drysdale.
Beautiful Plains Archives. Neepawa’s Sports Arena was opened in 1935. It was located west of the Neepawa Legion and was torn down in 1972.
Neepawa Press Archives
Neepawa Press
A throng of 1,200 people representing Neepawa and district, surrounding villages and Minnedosa congregated at the new municipal rink Thursday night for the official opening. Not for several years has such a crowd been gathered at one place in Neepawa. The weather was mild and could not have been more perfect for the celebration.
Skating was free, a hockey match was witnessed and moccasin dancing was enjoyed.
By eight o’clock, the building was crammed. The bleachers were taxed to capacity, the waiting room was full and the doors were crowded, so that many for a time were unable to see the ice. The hockey boys had been warming up for their game and when they were called off, the children swarmed over the boards and in a minute or so, the ice was covered with the youthful skaters who hooted and yelled with glee. It was not their turn, however and they had to leave the sheet until the rink had been officially declared open by the mayor.
The ice cleared, Mayor W. G. Pollock and Fred L. Davis, president of the board of trade, went on the ice to conduct the ceremonial opening. The mayor made his speech of welcome and after declaring the building open, Mr. Davis brought greetings from the board of trade. Hereupon the Legion band struck up O Canada and everybody rose to sing.
The hockey boys, representing the four teams of the commercial league, then placed for their game, for which Mayor Pollock dropped the puck for the face-off. Al. Bajus was the referee.
To John Card goes the honour of scoring the first goal in the new rink. Jack Thomson niftily controlled the puck until he had a fine opportunity to shoot at the goal, which he did, but the keen eye of Reg. Williams, the tender, was too quick for that attempt. But on the rebound, John Card snatched the rubber and slipped in the first counter. The second tally, which evened the standing of the game, was scored by Ron. Guinn. The tie was not broken.
Then, the skating started with the Legion band supplying the music. Young folks just learning, stumbling along; vigorous youth, long inactive thus, letting out; adults who had not skated for years having the time of their lives; all were in the gay crowd.
The event was nothing less than a fashion parade for most of the ladies. New togs for winter activities were in vogue and they were colourful and smart to perfection.Skates? One could hardly believe there were so many or varied. From attics they had been rescued from decay, sharpened up , so again they could afford their owners’ pleasure and recreation. Also, there were many new outfits that will be given a good breaking in this winter.
At eleven o’clock, one end was cleared off for dancing and for an hour, the revellers swung around merrily to the strains of melody from the Moonlight Serenaders orchestra.
Mayor Pollocks’s address
Following is the address given by Mayor W.G. Pollock:
Dear citizens and visitors from the surrounding district:
We are gathered here this evening for the purpose of celebrating the opening of our new skating and hockey rink. You have been invited here this evening by your town council as their guests. As mayor of your town, and on behalf of the town council with the assistance of the Board of Trade, I may say that I deem it a great honour to have the privilege of extending to you all a most cordial, sincere and hearty welcome. I desire to thank you all for such a splendid turnout and for your presence with us here tonight and it is our desire that all present will enjoy themselves and have a real good time, for it is the first celebration of this kind that Neepawa has ever had, and it may be a long time before we have another.
Neepawa has waited a long time for a skating rink, but I am pleased to say we now have one of the most modern structures for a rink that is to be found anywhere in the province of Manitoba today, one which every citizen of our town and surrounding district should be proud of.
May I draw your attention to this fact, that this beautiful rink has been erected without raising your taxes one cent. Your taxes have been reduced four mills during the past two years and we are looking forward to being able to make a further reduction in the taxes next year.
May I also draw your attention to this fact, that this rink will be practically paid for by the time we get our business straightened up at the end of this year. True, we issued five debentures of $1,000 each to be sold and made payable in 10 years, but as we went along, we found that it was not necessary to sell all of these debentures and we took up $3,000 worth of these debentures ourselves and only sold $2,000 worth. I might just state here that we could have sold them all at par without going out of town, which goes to show that the financial standing of the Town of Neepawa is perfectly well and in good shape.
The Neepawa Press’ story about the rink’s opening talked of a strong turn out for the official opening.
I would also like to inform you that we purchased, this year, $11,000 worth of our own waterworks debentures, which were placed to the credit of our sinking fund and let me tell you that we have today $92,000 deposited in the sinking fund to go towards paying off our waterworks debentures when they become due.
I am giving you these figures just to show you that we have not gone broke building this rink.
I would also like to say that it was my intention to have this rink built last year, but the matter was left in the hands of the Board of Trade to procure plans and specifications for a rink and there was a committee appointed, but it failed in its duties and the matter drifted along until it got too late to build before winter set it.
I was determined to have something done about building a rink this year and we got to work early in the season and with the co-operation of the Board of Trade and your town council, you see, ladies and gentlemen, the results of this co-operation right here.
Many people who visited our town during the construction of this rink have asked me how in the world the town could afford to build a rink like this during such a time of depression as we are passing through. Needless to say, ladies and gentlemen, my reply to them was this, we have the money.
First of all, it was necessary to get permission from the government to spend this money, so the Secretary-Treasurer was instructed to communicate with the Municipal Commissioners’ Department and ascertain if they would give us permission to build a municipal rink by issuing $5,000 in debentures and paying the balance out of current account.
Mr. Cottingham and his assistant, Mr. Mellish, came up and investigated the financial standing of our town and it took him but a very short time to say “yes”, we could go ahead and build.
We at once got in touch with Mr. Elliott, the architect at Brandon and he submitted different plans for our consideration. With the assistance of the Board of Trade, we selected what we considered the strongest and most suitable plans as you see it here tonight. We then called for tenders to be received subject to the passing of the bylaw. We submitted the bylaw to the rate payers and it was carried. This being done, we lost no time in closing up the contract and getting the work started.
Now, I think that you will all agree with me that we have one of the best and most up-to-date rinks in the province. This, coupled with the best town in the province, I think, is a very good showing.
And I now have much pleasure in officially declaring this rink opened for business and pleasure.
