After an article appeared in the Wellington Advertiser about vandalism at an outdoor ice rink here, crime dropped off drastically.
Gary Inder said on Monday that he was amazed at the changes at the Beatty Park rink after the Dec. 28 article appeared.
In that article, Inder, a volunteer, suggested if the vandalism did not stop, he would stop volunteering to work on the rink.
“As soon as that article appeared, the damage dropped right off,” he said on Monday afternoon.
Inder had complained that nets were being broken and pucks were disappearing. He said that while one net was damaged on the Jan. 6 weekend, the number of pucks left for hockey players has climbed substantially, as missing pucks were returned to the pails that he uses at the rink for containers.
Inder said he credits parents, too, for talking to their children about the damage. He said parents know if their children were at the rink, and he suspected many of them spoke firmly about treating the rink with respect – or they could lose it.
But some damage cannot be stopped.
The weather over the weekend raised havoc with the ice, leaving puddles and ruts.
But that is damage that Inder and his wife, Lee, understand. He said they will have to wait, likely until next week, for the weather to get cold enough, and then they will start to rebuild the two ice surfaces – one for hockey, and one for skaters.
Inder noted that Canadians have some traits that make them different from Americans. He said many Canadians “sit back” and do not complain, unlike Americans.
“They’ll scream like hell,” when they have a beef, he said.
In this case, though, it was a hockey rink – a Canadian icon. Inder did some yelling, and it seemed to be as effective as the latest Canadian Junior hockey team.
Inder also noted that shortly after the article appeared, he was under the weather for a few days, and when he returned to the rink, four adults and a handful of kids were flooding and shoveling, and one even brought a snowblower to the rink to clear the ice.
Inder also noted that there are some nice rewards to the volunteer work.
“Kids come up to you and say “Do you do the rink? Thank you very much.’ ”
