GREENSTONE — The Municipality of Greenstone is considering the closure of Beardmore’s community complex, but Eric Rutherford reckons that’s a bad idea.
Rutherford was Beardmore’s last mayor, before the township on Highway 11 was amalgamated with Geraldton, Nakina and other communities to form the extensive Greenstone municipality.
“Our recreation complex is a multi-purpose building,” Rutherford told Newswatch in a recent interview in Beardmore.
“It provides us with a community hall and a curling ice surface and an arena ice surface. The combination was put in place to have a unified building with service for a diversity of things.
“And if we close the whole structure,” he continued, “not only do we lose our ice skating surface and our curling surface, but we lose that community hall.
“And that's an invaluable asset when it comes to conducting a funeral service for one of our residents who may have passed on or conducting a marriage for a family that might be entering that stage in their life, along with numerous dances and community events.”
The complex is “also a gathering place for the youth of our community where they can enjoy special times of the year,” he said.
“We do have other places,” Rutherford said. “We have a senior citizens club, but we are restricted with the number of people that we can accommodate.”
The complex has served as an “emergency reception centre and proved to be invaluable” when it accommodated wildland firefighters in 2000, he said.
“I know our staff were feeding over 300 people at a sitting for meals and we had eight helicopters flying out of that landing field adjacent to the community centre (in 2000),” he said.
“So it became invaluable as an emergency gathering spot and would continue to do so. If you had, say, a power failure in the community, you could electrify the building and keep the people warm.”
It has also served as a place of shelter for people stuck in highway closures, he said.
Rutherford said the complex is “like a building block” for the community, providing support to the local public school and groups.
Removing one building block could cause others to tumble, he said.
Community centres in Beardmore and Nakina are both up for possible closure as Greenstone tries to cut expenditures.
A decision on whether to close the facilities has been deferred to mid-April.
Greenstone Mayor Jamie McPherson told Newswatch last month the municipality is caught “between a rock and a hard place.”
Greenstone wishes it could keep all its facilities but legally can’t run deficits, he said.
No decision will be made without hearing from Beardmore and Nakina residents, he said in an interview last week.
“It’s important to take all the voices of everyone back to council,” he said.
The municipality is listening and “council will make the decision based on the information that is received by council and the proposals that are given to council,” he said.
Last month, a Greenstone council meeting heard deputations for preserving the Beardmore and Nakina community centres.
In one deputation, resident Rick Mikesh said the Beardmore complex has been the community’s “life centre.”
The 2,767-square-kilometre Greenstone municipality was created in 2001 by combining the Beardmore and Nakina townships, the towns of Geraldton and Longlac, and some unincorporated communities along Highway 11.
