As the fate of the Trout Creek Community Centre remains in limbo, there’s a significant reason why many local residents want to preserve it.
More than half a century ago, several dozen Trout Creek residents built the arena, attaching it to the existing community centre in their spare time as volunteers.
Last fall, an engineering firm told Powassan town council the arena portion is at the end of its useful life and is recommending it be replaced.
See: Trout Creek Community Centre must close at end of ice skating season
Council is trying to find ways to repair the deficiencies rather than tear it down.
The community centre was built in 1948 but the arena portion wasn’t added until 1971. The only other ice surface at the time was a small local outdoor ice rink several blocks away in downtown Trout Creek.
Every other nearby community like Powassan, South River and Burk’s Falls had indoor arenas.
Potato and cattle farmer Frank Rick is largely credited as the catalyst for the arena.
By the early 1970s there was an existing desire among residents to have a better place to skate beyond the outdoor rink.
Rick had two adopted boys, Robbie and Brian, who excelled at hockey. Those two factors got Frank Rick to start talking to community members about building an indoor arena.
The volunteers who built the arena were mostly fathers in their 30s when work began and quite a few have since died, including Rick. However, a number are alive and are eager to tell how their volunteerism made the arena a reality.
One of those volunteers was Murray Grasser, now 86.
Grasser recalled it was the spring of 1971 when he and eight other men got permission from the Department of Lands and Forests, the forerunner of today’s Ministry of Natural Resources, to cut about 60 white pine trees on Crown land in nearby South River.
“They marked the trees we could cut,” Grasser said. “We cut them over two to three weeks and hauled them out on three huge truckloads.”
The trees were planed and kept in 30-foot lengths and became the pillars the arena’s roof top would sit on.
Larry O’Shaughnessy, 82, was a shift worker in North Bay and his schedule saw him working 21 straight days and then off three days. O’Shaughnessy would show up at the arena site on his off days and work on the roof.
He would also come in ahead of his night shift and put in a few hours before heading off to North Bay.
Getting some men to do roofing work was a job in itself because not everyone liked being too high off the ground. O’Shaughnessy and Grasser both recall one incident where it took them an hour to convince one of the volunteers to climb onto the roof.
Grasser was on the roof one evening when some dew had formed on the tin covering.
“I was about halfway up when this fellow started to slide down because of the dew,” Grasser said. “I grabbed him as he came by. After that, he wouldn’t get back on the roof.”
Former NHL defenceman Gerry Odrowski, who was born and raised in Trout Creek, also worked on the arena during the off-season.
“I remember handing the tin sheets to the fellows on the roof,” recalled Odrowski, 86. “That was quite a chore because they were about 16 feet long and it took a few of us to lift the sheets up to the roof.
Odrowski worked for the Department of Lands and Forests during the off-season and was building a cottage nearby when work on the arena began. Because of his commitments, he could only work on the site for a limited time before the NHL season resumed.
He wasn’t able to enjoy the fruits of his labour until he retired from the NHL and began playing old-timer hockey with the locals.
When the arena opened around 1972 it didn’t have artificial ice and there was no refrigeration or ice-making equipment.
Grasser said it was just a dirt floor. “Each winter we would bring snow in, spread it across the dirt floor and then we just kept pouring water on it,” Grasser said. “You opened the doors to the outside and that was our refrigeration.”
Two years later, the decision was made to add the cement ice pad to create artificial ice.
Gerry Eckensviller, 75, remembers that day well.
“There were about 35 of us working over two shifts and we worked non-stop,” Eckensviller said.
“Over 24 hours, we poured 120 cubic yards of cement. That was a phenomenal job to pull off. We had a cement mixer and as we dumped one load of cement another load went in. It was continuous.”
Although Odrowski wasn’t as involved with the arena build as the other residents, he was on hand the day the cement slab was poured to form the ice pad. As teams of men trowelled the wet cement to even it out, Odrowski recalled one individual who didn’t quite have the hang of proper trowelling.
“We had finished trowelling and there was this one guy who got hold of a trowel and he was walking all over the finished work,” Odrowski said. The lighthearted incidents aside, no one ever got hurt and everyone agrees the residents put a lot of sweat into the project.
“This is why the people don’t want to see the arena come down,” said Rod Rennette. “A lot of work went into the building.”
Rennette, 69, was 15 at the time the arena was being built and he was among quite a few young boys who worked on the facility.
During summer vacation, Rennette and several boys dug six-foot-deep trenches where the pillars would eventually go.
The boys were the only ones who were paid and they earned about $7 a day.
Jeff Lang, 66, was 12 at the time and what he remembers is pounding nail after nail into the lumber of the arena. “There must be 500 million nails in that building,” he jokingly said. “We just sat there and hammered in nails day after day.”
Both Lang and Rennette said they didn’t have to be coaxed to work on the arena. Lang says adults directed the boys and they did the work.
But Rennette said there is no way this kind of project could ever happen in today’s work environment.
When the entire project was done, including the artificial ice, the arena was officially opened during the mid-1970s, debt-free because of grants and the work of the volunteers.
During the first year, the artificial ice was installed, the Trout Creek Midgets won the 1975-76 all-Ontario championship and Jeff Lang was a member of that team, as were Rick’s two adopted boys.
As the future of the arena is debated, the town council hopes a second opinion on the building’s fate doesn't recommend tearing it down.
Larry O’Shaughnessy isn't too worried about what the future holds. O'Shaughnessy says he has no doubt council “will be able to save it.”
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Almaguin News. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.