The community of Bienfait recently had a big reason to celebrate.
MNP presented a cheque for $16,500 to the Bienfait Memorial Arena, allowing the arena to finish paying off the ice plant replacement that occurred last year. It cost about $200,000, including the equipment and labour.
Amanda Pukas with the arena said the old ice plant dated back to the 1960s. The unit suffered "multiple failures" in January 2022 that cost more than $60,000 to repair, she said. A decision was made at that time that they couldn't continue to pay for repairs to the aging equipment.
"We needed to work towards getting something," said Pukas.
The arena started applying for grants. The first one was for $100,000 from Tundra Oil & Gas through the Richardson Foundation. Pukas noted the RM of Coalfield helped the arena work with Tundra for the money.
After the support from Tundra, they decided to proceed with the replacement project last summer so that the work could be done before the start of the 2022-23 ice sports season. Then they sought out the remaining $100,000.
"We became very fortunate with everyone giving to us," said Pukas. "We attended lots of meetings, applied for lots of grants, and were fortunate to receive grants."
In addition to MNP and Tundra, the RM supplied $5,000, the Steel Reef Infrastructure Corp. provided $25,000, and Affinity Credit Union donated $50,000. A three-on-three hockey tournament raised about $15,000.
The MNP contribution put them over the $200,000 mark, and Pukas said it would help them with future needs.
The Town of Bienfait was also very supportive, she said. The committee went to the town for assistance after the initial ice plant issues, because they don't have $60,000. The town helped with covering some of the costs of the repairs.
The new ice plant has not caused any problems since it was installed.
"If anything, I've noticed our power bills have gone down a bit, too," said Pukas. "At times we were running in excess of $5,000 a month for power. Our operating costs are quite high, too, so we're running a little bit more energy efficiently, and it's benefited us in multiple ways."
She said there was a lot of concern that they wouldn't be able to get the ice plant up and running again after the initial breakdown.
"That would have been probably the end of us for the rest of the year (2021-22), which would have been a lot for our three house teams to have nowhere to play," said Pukas. "Obviously we're used as Estevan Minor Hockey's third arena, so we're very booked full time, and we have rec. hockey."
They had also lost about $25,000 in revenue due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020-21 season.
"It's been a lot over the last three years, so it's definitely a good feeling to know that it's paid for, it's done and we're in good condition to keep up and running, and no headaches to be worried about," said Pukas.
Now that the ice plant has been paid for, Pukas said they can start looking at some of the other things that need to be done for the arena.
