WEBEQUIE — A new arena would bring a host of mental and physical health benefits to the hundreds of people who call Webequie First Nation home, members of the community’s elected council say.
Plans to build an indoor sports and multipurpose facility have been in the works for years, Chief Cornelius Wabasse said. A site has been selected at the community’s south end near the powwow grounds and the materials for a basic shell to make a covered ice surface are there, he added, but funding is needed to bring the proper equipment and expertise north to put it up.
The community has a different space — in a large field between the administrative office and the First Nation’s school — where a boarded rink sits for use in winter, but Wabasse said it often doesn’t get maintained and the long harsh winters don’t make that any easier.
“We are slowly making progress and it's something that we need in our community as our population is growing, we need to see an arena inside,” he said. “If we had an arena, we wouldn't have to worry about the snow, but we still (would) have to maintain it.”
Wabasse said community leadership maintains contact with various funding bodies and private companies about the project. He said the overall plan is to build it in stages, starting with a basic covered rink and adding to it until it’s a fully-fledged indoor multipurpose facility with a proper ice surface.
“It's being worked on,” he said. “I'm hoping that, at some point in time, we'll be able to get funding in place to be able to do that.”
Outlets for things like sports and recreation are important to a community’s residents — particularly its young people, said Coun. Tyler Shewaybick, who helped start a program in Webequie that works at a grassroots level with child and family services and at-risk youth. At 23, he’s already in his second term on council after being a crisis worker in the First Nation.
“I think that would help … the youth,” he said of an indoor recreation facility. “Because they like sports — they like volleyball and they like hockey.”
“Every winter we try and get someone to get the rink going, but when weather comes, the snow comes in, so that most of our youth don't have that opportunity to go to play some sports.”
He said those benefits would extend to mental health.
“The youth will come out more if they have an indoor place to go to,” he said. “They'll be more physically active, it'll help with their mental health.”
“We have that design already — it's really good and we're hoping that we can come up with the money to be able to do that,” Wabasse said of the arena project.
“That's why we are working with people that come to our community, like companies and business people, we work with them so that they can chip into the arena project — and they have.”