Pilot Mound’s new arena built by pride

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This article was published 23/04/2010 (5717 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PILOT MOUND — In the decade since people here lifted the first brick to build their own arena and sports complex, countless other Manitoba arenas have gone up in less time.

Nearby Killarney built its $14-million recreation centre in just a year. It didn’t take much longer for Dauphin to put up its $11-million Credit Union Centre in 2006. Portage la Prairie’s $42-million Portage Credit Union Centre will be completed this summer, four years after the first plans were drawn up.

Even the MTS Centre in Winnipeg got built more quickly.

But those communities didn’t physically build the arenas themselves.

On Saturday, the people of Pilot Mound, 175 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, will officially open one of the truly great community achievements of recent times. The community of about 1,000 will officially open an arena — of a size and value far beyond the means of their small population — that they built almost entirely with volunteer labour.

Local people laid down some 32,000 cinder blocks, threaded over 25 kilometres of pipe for heated floors, hung 85 doors, attached 70 large light fixtures over the hockey rink, to mention just some of the work involved.

It cost them $3.5 million, mostly for materials as well as some skilled trades work. The Pilot Mound Millennium Recreation Complex is valued today at up to $11 million.

"We’re enjoying every single minute of it," said Gord Arbuckle, a community leader and one of the hundreds of volunteers.

Pat Sutherland, owner of the TrueValue hardware store in Pilot Mound and project chairman, remembers a meeting in 1999 when an estimated cost came back to replace the town’s crumbling curling rink and hockey arena.

"We thought, ‘We’re done. We can’t afford it,’ " Sutherland said.

But they caught wind of Manitoba Hydro holding an auction for a temporary arena built for workers on its Limestone dam and generating station, in the town of Sundance (now vacated).

People in Pilot Mound bought it for $25,000 — they were the only bidder — and a caravan of volunteers headed north on the 12-hour drive and dismantled and transported the entire complex in 40 days. They also thriftily snagged seats for the facility from the old Winnipeg Arena.

And so began their 10-year odyssey.

Arbuckle, a former mayor and retired local accountant, became a "blockhead," as he called himself, putting down the cinder blocks. They hired a skilled bricklayer, then had up to a dozen volunteers for the skilled tradesman to train and supervise, a group that included farmers, teachers, insurance agents, pipeline workers, truck drivers, etc. That’s how they got it done.

Women in town baked and made sandwiches for the lunches and coffee breaks, and every time there was leftover cake from a birthday party, that went to the volunteers, too.

Actually, the sports complex was all but completed a year ago but everyone was so exhausted they just held off on the official opening.

Arbuckle remembers the first hockey games there. "Looking around the arena, you could see the feelings. A little satisfaction. All those emotions with a job well done," he said.

That isn’t likely to fade away. For example, if they hadn’t physically built it themselves, do you think you would see people regularly picking garbage off the floor on their way out after an event?

Of the $3.5 million, just $570,000 came from government, shared evenly between Ottawa and the province. The rest the community raised.

It isn’t just a rebuild. The new rec centre is considerably bigger and has more rooms. The skating arena (capacity of about 700), curling rink and daycare centre are completed, with plans for a theatre and a community museum.

The hockey arena’s dedication is Saturday. It will be named after a native son, Hall of Fame hockey hero John "Black Jack" Stewart, a rock-solid NHL defenceman.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca