Dear editor:

The following is a copy of a letter sent to Lord Mayor Betty Disero.

My kids have been out of hockey for a number of years.  

But other kids are still in there, following COVID restrictions. 

Now we have the Jr. A Niagara Predators playing home games on Friday nights. With, I might add, not a ton of support. 

This is good hockey, for goodness sake.

Our arena in Virgil was wonderful a few years ago. Parents, grandparents and friends showed up, bought coffees, watched the games, yelled and screamed, booed the referees. 

Then the kids would line up to buy all kinds of junk. No one cared – it was fun.

So, now we are trying to support our Niagara Predators as well as the other Saturday night (older) players and all of the younger hockey players, kids and grandkids.

The junior team's general manager, Johan Eriksson, is adamant his hockey squad will be a community team. Well, I guess we will see.

However, the concession stand is not open and the heat is not on.

Did the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake decide supporting young families with kids in hockey is no longer worth the price?  

Is this strictly a retirement community? 

Should we maybe invite tourists to join in and then get all kinds of funding?

You think this is tongue in cheek?  It isn’t, it annoys me that this town was once family-oriented with lots going on for kids. Now it appears to be for tourism, heritage and retirement. How sad.

I'm aware of things for children in the Virgil park that the town has done, but cannot understand the rationale that the concession stand was too expensive to operate.

So what if you weren't making money? You do with all these new humongous houses being taxed to the limit. 

Our taxes are going up because of the police and population. That was an interesting statement in the paper. I haven’t seen a cop for ages and usually only when an accident occurs and they fly from St. Catharines or Niagara Falls.  

But that has nothing to do with the arena.

So take some of our tax money and put it back into our arena. Where is our concession stand? Where is the heat? 

It's a make-work project for young people. Are you all old and kids gone? 

Get with the program for goodness sake and support our arena. 

I am really annoyed. NOTL should not always be about tourism, heritage and old, retired people.  

We know this town council is trying to save money by cutting things like the concession stand at the arena, but spend tons of our dollars getting experts to do their job for them. 

They don't appear to make a decision without calling in experts.  

Sign me, an old retired person.

Sandie Gordon Schulz
NOTL