LAC LA BICHE - Discussions are continuing on what will be included in new plans to re-shape the Lac La Biche Recreation Grounds and McArthur Park. New ideas focus on a desire by planners to change the area's use from active sports to a passive leisure opportunities. While the leisure-focus could include the removal of the main baseball diamond to make way for walking trails, family picnic areas and green-space, a new idea could see the main baseball diamond preserved as a piece of history.
Opposition to the possible removal of the baseball diamond was most recently pitched to Lac La Biche County councillors last week by the president and vice-president of the Lac La Biche Minor Baseball Association. Just days before the deadline of an online community survey collecting responses on the future of the diamond in plans for the area, Ali Fyith and Stacey St. Jean were suggesting to make the baseball field a heritage site.
Sports impact lives, said St. Jean, as she began the appeal to have the near-century old area proclaimed and protected for its historic value.
"Sports can erase cultural, economic and racial differences," she said, relating to her own family's long history with the baseball diamond back to the 1930s. She said family stories about first-pitches, games against neighbouring rivals, local families enjoying a game from the stands or helping out on the field for an introductory t-ball practice .. it all adds to the fabric of the community.
"These stories remind us how baseball, like many sports, brings communities together," she said.
With historical data dating back to the first decade of the 20th Century — with a team called the Lac La Biche Fawns — Fyith and St. Jean laid out a road-map of history that centred around the ball diamond. From the inception of a community sports days event and the origin of the Lac La Biche Dodgers team in the mid 1940s to the Pow Wow Days events that began a decade later, the field has been a focal point for sport — and still remains busy and in use today," said St. Jean.
At the same time the group was asking to pursue a historic designation, Fyith said they were showing their support to keep the diamond in the new plans for the McArthur Park re-design. While the dates and numbers from historic calendars are important measures from the past, the increasing numbers of young players joining the sport leading into the future is just as important, he said.
"We have been fielding 16 to 20 minor ball teams in a season," he said, listing off the increased rosters of baseball, softball and T-ball categories.
He is worried that the removal of any ball diamonds — even with three new ones being built at the new Bold Center sports fields — would be challenging. "It's going to tie our hands even more if these two are removed."
After last season where the league was challenged by weather and a lack of available diamonds for the numbers, Fyith said parents — more than 300 ratepayers — were concerned with the issue. Combining the minor baseball teams with the adult slo-pitch teams that also use the available diamonds, Fyith said around 1,000 area residents continue to use the fields each year.
While municipal statistics show the community currently sits above the accepted planning ratio of population to ball diamonds, recreation manager Darrell Lessmeister said plans are continuing to find more opportunities for the sport, including discussions with local school division officials about existing diamonds on their properties. Lessmeister says the new diamonds at the Bold Center sports fields are expected to be in play by this summer. He also said there have never been plans to remove the two existing diamonds at McArthur Park before the new diamonds are operating.
Councillor Jason Stedman also reminded council that no decision on the fate of the diamonds — including work on a heritage site designation — should take place until the results of the online survey are tabulated. The survey closed on March 5, with results expected in the coming weeks.
"If the results of the survey come back with ... if the community is strongly against it (keeping the ball diamonds) then it might not be there at all," he said.
After some discussion council voted by majority to seek some preliminary paperwork on the heritage designation.
If the survey results come back with an overwhelming desire to remove the ball diamonds from the new McArthur Place plan — and council decides to go that route — Mayor Omer Moghrabi said the heritage site application wouldn't go ahead.
"We'd stop going ahead with it," he said.
