Expect the competition for ice time In Kamloops to ramp up this winter.

Availability across the city will be limited with Memorial arena being used as a homeless shelter for an indefinite period of time. Mayor Ken Christian says “we’re short of ice. Bottom line.”

“I know the users aren’t going to like to hear this, but they’re going to have to look at going out of town. Logan Lake, Chase, we have tried to make arrangements with those neighbouring municipalities to book ice time out there.”

“The times that you have for your hockey game might be very late at night or very early in the morning. We try to divide it equally amongst our users. School kids and minor hockey getting a lot of those day slots and then we put senior and recreational hockey in later in the day.”

“But our weekends are just jammed with tournaments and that’s part of who we are as Canada’s tournament capital. So, it’s a problem and it’s one that we have to work on. Memorial will be out of service and that has been a real blow to the users, not just hockey but figure skating and even the hard floor lacrosse users.”

Ice availability was looked at in the Recreation Master Plan approved in late 2019. Among the recommendations within that document were:  Sustain the current indoor ice arena provision in the short term (0–3 years), increase the number of ice arena sheets by at least one to two
sheets in the midterm (3–7 years) and increase the number of ice arena sheets by at least an additional one to two sheets (two to four sheets total) in the long term (7–17 years).

At the present time the city of Kamloops has five arenas with six sheets of ice when fully operational. Those are Brocklehurst Arena, McArthur Island (2-sheets),  Sandman Centre, Valleyview Arena and the aforementioned Memorial Arena. It’s also worth noting that the Brocklehurst Recreation Centre is due for a face lift in the near future if grant funding is approved.