August 19, 2006

Welcome ladies and gentlemen and thank you very much for coming.

My name is Kathy Gadsby and I am the Chairman for the Village of Oil Springs’ Trillium Grant Committee. We formed this committee shortly after the municipal elections in 2003 in an effort to seek out funding to assist the Village in continuing to provide parks and recreational venues for the children of the Village.

In 2004 we were successful in receiving a Grant of $59,900.00 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for restoration of our Baseball facilities located just to the West of this building. As you can see that project was extremely successful and many games are played here every day throughout the summer season and today we were in the midst of hosting the Midget Girls end of season tournament but Mother Nature had a different idea.

We have invited you here today to tell you about our next project. We recognized that this building was in need of an exterior extreme make-over. This building was constructed in 1957 by the hands of many volunteers. Believe it or not it was constructed with an ice pad. There were hockey dressing rooms off the front of this existing building and local folks enjoyed public skating as well. In later years as costs to maintain the ice pad increased a local committee was formed to renovate the building and convert it to a community centre. In 1965 in preparation for the Centennial year that re-construction began and that is when the ball diamond facilities were added.

So, after receiving that initial grant in 2004 we very excitedly set to work in the fall of 2004 to submit our next application. We were disappointed when we received word that we had not been approved. But, because the committee is so dedicated to this project and knowing that we had to keep trying we submitted our application two more times.

The 3rd submission deadline was March 1 of this year and we have all had our fingers crossed since then.

You can imagine our excitement when a few short weeks ago we were advised that our grant application was successful. Without grants such as this, small rural communities like the Village of Oil Springs will not be able to maintain our facilities. We are the communities who come together often for weddings, car shows, craft sales, public meetings and these are the only facilities that will accommodate those events.

Today I would like to thank the local Village of Oil Springs Trillium Grant Committee, our regional Trillium Foundation representative Sandy Braendle as well as the entire Trillium Foundation review committee. Without the commitment of these folks we wouldn’t be here with good news today.

At this time I will invite the Warden of Lambton County and Mayor of Enniskillen Mr. Jim Burns to say a few words and then our Lambton Kent Middlesex MPP Ms. Maria Van Bommel will speak followed by Rosemary Lavoratore of the Ontario Trillium Foundation local review committee.

Thank you Jim, Maria and Rosemary.

Wow! – that’s a big cheque!!! – and it is certainly appreciated.

Work on this project will begin in the next few weeks. I am happy to say that John Ward, one of our grant committee members has volunteered to be the Site Foreman for this project. John will be here to make sure that all of the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed as we work our way through this project quickly and safely. As well today, I am taking this opportunity to announce that Agri-Urban is the successful contractor for this project. They will be removing and replacing the roofing and siding from the building and also insulating the side walls. Brian Fitzgerald of Agri-Urban hoped to be here today as his daughter was scheduled to play baseball and 2:00 pm but the game was rained out.

While we have received this wonderful amount of money, I would also like to take this time to let all of the local folks know that we will be fund raising. We have a lot of other upgrades we would like to incorporate into this project and so we will be turning to residents to help out when they can.

On that note, our first fundraising event will be held right here in this building. October 28 we will be holding a Halloween Dance (sorry kids, adults only for this one) – we haven’t had one in a few years and Joy Smith, a committee member, will be organizing that. So please mark that date on your calendar and start pulling your award winning costumes together.

In closing, again I thank the Ontario Trillium Foundation and our Village of Oil Springs committee for working together to make sure that we have the facilities to keep our children safe, healthy and happy in our rural communities.