By Denise Fung
It’s a case of high demand but low supply for the City of Ottawa’s indoor arenas.
The city does not have enough ice time available at its arenas to match the demand for ice rentals.
Dave Lahey, sports co-ordinator for the City of Ottawa, says the 11 indoor arenas across the city are all heavily used and the city turns down requests for ice rentals every day.
“If you called today and said I want to book an hour of ice tonight,’ I’d say no. Couldn’t give it to you,” says Lahey. “Usually during the week from four until 11 o’clock at night you’d be hard pressed to find an hour of ice available during that period.”
Lahey says the demand for ice has been high for the past two to three years. Weekday evenings and weekends are heavily booked by minor and veteran hockey leagues. The arenas are less busy during the daytime because the main users are at work or school.
“The city needs to take a more aggressive stance in providing recreation for its citizens,” says Keith Brown, president of the Laroche Park Community Sports Association. He says the city needs more arenas to meet evening and weekend demand.
Brown is also concerned available ice is too expensive for some families. It can cost up to $140 to rent an arena for an hour.
“We have an awful lot of single parents out there today where we didn’t have 10, 15 years ago and these single parents are working, trying to make ends meet. They just don’t have the money available,” says Brown.
David McPhee, who books ice time for the West End Hockey League, says his league is making do with what ice time they have but could use more hours for practice.
“The only thing I can see right now is that we live with what we have and we just hope they keep the costs down,” says McPhee.
McPhee says increased demand for ice time is due to more women playing hockey and ringette and more people taking up figure and speed skating.
Coun. Elisabeth Arnold says there is not much the city can do about the ice shortage.
“Yes, there’s a real need to provide affordable, accessible facilities for youth, there’s no doubt about that,” says Arnold. “But it’s going to be very difficult to provide that as we cut back our budgets.”
With the province giving municipalities greater financial responsibilities with fewer resources, Arnold says the City of Ottawa will not increase the number of facilities and has trouble maintaining what it already has.
Arnold says it will be difficult for the city to provide the same level of services.
But Brown says the rinks are important to the community. He says he knows children love to play hockey, just like he did when he was growing up in the community. “We were on skates out on the outdoor rink from the time we got off school until it was time to go for supper and then back out again after supper and until time to go to bed,” says Brown.