Greetings to all of my fellow Oakville Curling Club members and a special welcome to all new members who have joined our club. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer and are gearing up for the upcoming 2025/26 curling season. The ice is in and is fantastic. Thanks to Scott Foster and his crew!
We’ve have had a busy off season with a number of projects that have been or are very near completion. When you come to the club you will notice a number of changes and big improvements.
As you may know we received a grant from the Ontario Trillium Fund to assist in our efforts to become compliant with the AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act). Over the spring and summer, we had a number of upgrades completed including the addition of a chair lift on the stairs leading down to sheet 8. We have also added 6 automatic doors and replaced the concrete sidewalk on the northside of the building, bringing it up to grade level with the emergency exit doors. Additionally, we had the lounge bathroom upgrading and the emergency exit signs have also been upgraded to meet with the new standards. These changes will allow for all of our members to enjoy everything the club has to offer.
We have also had to deal with some drainage issues at the northside of the building. The existing drainage system that dealt with a large volume of water from the ice shed roof had become dilapidated and this resulted in flooding of our walkway and created some potentially hazardous conditions. We excavated the entire northside area of our property as well as a large portion of the west side parking lot and installed new piping as well as a new drainage system under the parking lot. This will dissipate the roof run off for years to come and provide a safer environment for our members.
We have also resurfaced the west side parking lot and added some curbing as well which we can all agree was overdue. On top of this, we updated our electrical power grid which now feeds our 4 new light posts on the west parking lot, again adding addition safety and security for our members.
Some smaller upgrades include, better lighting in both the lounge area and in the ladies locker room lounge as well as a new POS system at the bar and we are also upgrading our on ice camera system that will allow for streaming of games and better viewing for members in the lounge area.
These accomplishments and the efforts of our various committees and the board of directors speak to our ongoing efforts to ensure the Oakville Curling Club is ‘best in class’ and provides the best possible venue for our membership.
A special shout out and sincere thank you to both Karl Mitchell who gave generously of his time and expertise to ensure that these complex projects were done properly and on time, and secondly to our General Manager Ian Tetley who was hands on for all of this and was our point of contact for all of our contractors. This could not have happened without these two gentlemen.
Finally, thank you to all of our members! While our facility continues to be upgraded, the heartbeat of the OCC is our members who continue to support the club. None of these accomplishments happen without you. Please enjoy the upcoming season. I look forward to seeing you all very soon.
Very Best,
Greg Irwin