You hear and see a lot of stories and photos about recreation facilities and opportunities from Timmins past in local media and on numerous websites. And that always brings to my mind the way things are so drastically different today. We seem to have lost so much year after year.
As an active youth, I had a myriad of chances to experience sports via school or city-run and maintained facilities. Of course, we had the Mac, Confed, ‘Splex, The Barn and Hollinger Park, but I'm speaking about a smaller scale.
Within a five-minute walk from my home, I had six facilities that had ball fields in summer and rinks come winter. We had Norono park, St. Gerard, Louis Rheaume, Coronation, Flora Mac and Sacred Heart. In the summer we had park sports across the city. A number of parks (such as Norono, Civic, Coronation, Hollinger, etc) had fastball teams run by park supervisors that played against each other all summer. We also got a chance to try a number of track and field events that culminated in a meet at summer's end at the Hollinger. No kid was ever left behind because it was all free of cost to participants.
We had tennis courts in Melrose, on Cameron, near the current Metro, across from the Mac and in South End. We also had at least five fully staffed and maintained beaches to swim at, in addition to the old pool in Schumacher. Most of the current and beautiful trail system we have in Timmins is built upon the old unmaintained bike and hiking trails from our youth. We also had a full baseball league at the jewel of a park … The Hollinger.
In my teens, when I discovered competitive cycling, we had numerous races that helped prepare myself and others for events across the province.
The Confed was also home to a thriving lacrosse league. The local Legion branch hosted track and field meets and basketball courts were at every school.
Winter brought fully staffed outdoor rinks with between 22 and 30 operational during the season. Grades 7 and 8 saw us able to participate in a few games of hockey against rival schools on those same rinks. High school saw us introduced to broomball at Don Bosco across from the old O'Gorman.
All of the above were in addition to minor hockey, football and other school-based sports.
Today, Norono park is DelVillano park and most of the ballfields and outdoor rinks are no more. We still have some beautiful outdoor rinks left and ballfields mostly geared to adults.
We are fortunate to have a state-of-the-art minor baseball park with a well-run league for the kids.
But the days of scooting down to our neighbourhood park to see what the supervisor had in store or just to meet and interact with friends are long gone. Same for the outdoor rinks, with the shack and rink attendant.
Places that kept us safe, entertained and having fun.
In this period of hectic team assembly for NHL teams, you may have heard talk by sportscasters on how Canadian teams are handcuffed more so than American teams by the salary cap.
Many feel it is not a level playing field.
Why?
With the huge difference in tax implications between the countries, it is a convoluted system at best.
In short, an $8 million contract in Tampa is $10 to $11 million in Ottawa. Yes, we all know all contracts are paid in U.S. dollars but that is not the half of it.
Canadian players pay more tax so their take-home pay is less than American-based players based on the same dollar amount of their contract.
And this is a biggie … interest payments on a player’s house, car, etc in the U.S. are tax deductible. Year after year that is a distinct advantage as Canada does not have the same rules.
It's a little more complex than that and I know I'm not really good at explaining it, but if it interests you, research it and see what conclusion you come to.
Here's my take. One thing pro sports leagues are good at is money matters. Can the NHL braintrust not come up with an equitable salary cap that factors take-home pay as opposed to gross pay?
Just a thought from a very simple mind! And I do mean simple mind.
Later skater.
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