Matt Pryde is hoping to fill the Tantramar Veterans Memorial Civic Centre with new 630 new seats by the fall of 2026, and he’s asking the community for help to do so.
“The rink has been around for over 20 years now,” said the Active Living and Culture director after a May Tantramar council meeting. “And we’ve heard a lot of feedback from people over the years about their butts being cold. So we thought it’d be a good time to try to reach out to the community and see if the same people that supported the rink construction to begin with would be interested in supporting putting some seats in there.”
Donors can ‘grab a seat’ for a donation of $350 or more. The campaign aims to raise $189,000 to $220,000 to fully outfit the civic centre with new seating. “We’re just going to keep going until we hit our target,” said Pryde. “The hope is to be able to get seats in there for the 2026-27 season.”
So far, the campaign has brought in donations for 50 seats, and Pryde says the municipality is having “lots of conversations with other potential sponsors.”
The civic centre opened in 2004, and at the time replaced Allison Gardens, the former Mt A rink which stood on Lansdowne Street until 2003, on the site where the university is currently building a temporary library and future athletic centre.
Three levels of government contributed $1 million each toward the original civic centre project, and another $1.2 million was fundraised to fully outfit the centre, with help from volunteers like former Sackville town councillor Joyce O’Neil.
Back in the early 2000’s, O’Neil coordinated a ‘wall of bricks’ donor acknowledgment campaign which brought in $85,000 in donations. More than 20 years later, O’Neil became the first to ‘grab a seat’ in Tantramar’s new campaign.
The civic centre is, “a great facility that the vast majority of people in Tantramar take advantage of,” said Pryde, “whether they have children or grandchildren or they use it themselves.” Throughout the ice season, the rink is home to free public skates at lunch hours and on Sundays, as well as Sackville Minor Hockey, the Sackville Skating Club, the Tantramar Regional High School hockey teams and the Mount Allison Mounties. Pryde says that continuing to, “add to our state of the art facility is important. It adds to the comfort for the people who come in to enjoy the games and the practices.”
The 630 seats will be 20 inches wide, Pryde recently told council, and will be installed over the current concrete bleacher style seating. The new seats will not have arm rests, Pryde told council, and so “if you need to have a little extra room, there is some space there.”
“Keep in mind that I’ve been here for 11 years now, and I haven’t seen that place full,” said Pryde. “So you know, the chances of there being 630 people in there at a time are relatively slim.”
