Wawa Municipal Council's in favour of extending the ice season - at the end.
In their Committee of the Whole meeting last night, Council received a report addressing a July request from the Wawa Minor Hockey Association, other ice users, and supporters to make a minimum two-year commitment for the ice season to at least run from the start of September or Labour Day to the end of April, if not longer.
Community Services and Tourism Director Alex Patterson broke down the request into two parts, first addressing the request for earlier ice, which he warned "puts a significantly higher strain on all municipal resources", with two years of early ice for hockey schools showing the arena's design can't handle the warmer temperatures - even causing a three-week shutdown for $80,000 in mould remediation - while the staff responsible for making ice are the same as those responsible for parks and other tourism resources, which are open until the Thanksgiving weekend, with August their peak use.
As for later ice, Patterson found it viable to extend the season by a few weeks, noting it has happened at times in the past and it "creates significantly less of a strain on municipal resources", as the "typically cooler weather does not carry the same humidity and temperature issues, and the costs are lower than September for operating the ice plant" while staff aren't otherwise occupied with parklands, as those don't open until the Victoria Day weekend.
Patterson also noted that the curling ice policy had no dates for the start and end of season - even if it typically starts the first Monday of November and ends the first week of April - but since the arena and curling ice share a plant, it would make sense to combine the policies.
In the end, he offered Council three options: doing nothing and leaving the policy as is; extending the start and end of ice season; or giving staff the option to extend the end of the season up to two weeks based on certain criteria with an update ice policy also covering curling ice, but not moving the start of the season any earlier - the latter being his recommendation, which councillors voiced their approval for, though Mayor Melanie Pilon also questioned whether they would move forward with a referenced engineering report on the arena to look at concerns about its design, with Patterson explaining that would be put into 2026 Capital Budget deliberations, given the expected costs of such a study.