A Hard Canadian Winter's Snow Gonna Fall On Peterborough Tuesday Through Wednesday

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A winter storm watch by Environment Canada is in effect for Peterborough and area, with snowfall amounts of 25 to 35 cm projected—along with blowing snow—Tuesday through Wednesday.

All that snow will begin Tuesday morning. Strong easterly winds will gust up to 70 km/h, causing reduced visibility in blowing snow. Total snowfall amounts of 25 to 35 cm are likely before the snow tapers off during the day Wednesday.

Digging out from a snowfall back in the day in Peterborough

This snow is associated with a Colorado low that will cross Southern Ontario Tuesday and Wednesday, and you are advised to avoid travel if possible due to possible hazardous road conditions.

Of course, whatever the case, we have better plows now then we had back in the day to clear those roads. Here's an old school snow sweeper (see more old plow pictures here)…

Snow Sweeper on George Street between Brock and Murray Streets c. 1910 [Trent Valley Archives, Electric City Collection]

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Watch: Take A Tour Of Alex Bierk's Art Studio On "PTBOCanada" Show

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On Episode 36 of PTBOCanada, we take a tour of the Hunter Street studio of artist Alex Bierk.

Alex Bierk in his studio: February 6th, 2018

In the show, our Neil Morton speaks with Alex about creativity, culture, melding art and commerce, upcoming projects, the opiod crisis, addiction recovery and how his late father, renown artist David Bierk, was a huge inspiration to him and his siblings…

Watch the episode below…

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New Pool Pod Improves Accessibility At Peterborough Sport & Wellness Centre

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A new portable Pool Pod that can assist people with mobility impairments to get in and out of a pool has been installed at the Peterborough Sport and Wellness Centre thanks to a $50,000 grant from Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, a national charity dedicated to helping kids overcome financial and accessibility barriers to sport and recreation in an effort to provide inclusive play for kids
of all abilities.

The City of Peterborough was selected as one of nine inaugural Jumpstart Accessibility Grant recipients for the Pool Pod project, improving the accessibility of the community facility. A ribbon cutting for the new pool pod took place Thursday (February 7th) with Mayor Therrien.

Ribbon cutting ceremony on February 7th (photo courtesy City of Peterborough)

The new lift equipment improves the ability of people with mobility impairments to independently use the leisure pool, where previously they may have required assistance from a lifeguard.

The Pool Pod provides safe, efficient access to the pool, allowing more people to enter and exit the pool in a short period of time. This will enhance the Centre’s ability to develop specific recreational and therapeutic pool programming for people with physical disabilities.

New pool pod in use (photo courtesy City of peterborough)

The City of Peterborough tweeted out video of the new pool pod in use…

With the installation of the Pool Pod, Chelsey Gray, Aquatics Coordinator says that “work has begun to develop and deliver specialized aquatics programming supporting recreational and therapeutic participants. Our new programming will support children, families and agencies such as Five Counties Children’s Centre with recreational and therapeutic adapted swim lessons.”

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An Anonymous Donor Gives $1.25 Million To New Canadian Canoe Museum

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An anonymous out-of-province donor who believes in the power of the canoe to connect Canadians has invested $1.25 million to support the Canadian Canoe Museum’s move to the water’s edge as part of its $65 million capital fundraising campaign.

This generous gift is the first of its magnitude to be received from a donor outside of Ontario, demonstrating the national scope and scale of the new museum project.

The Canadian Canoe Museum is moving from its 1960s-era former factory building to an 85,000 square-foot-facility to be built alongside the Peterborough Lift Lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway—both National Historic Sites—in Peterborough.

Rendering courtesy Canadian Canoe Museum

“We are grateful for this generous gift, and the donor’s appreciation for the national nature of the new museum project,” says Bill Morris, Capital Campaign Chair. “This donor recognizes the canoe as a national icon, and sees its potential and power to connect Canadians.”

“The new museum will not only allow us to attract more visitors from across the country, it will allow us to reach out from coast to coast to coast in new and different ways—it will be our new high-profile headquarters,” adds Morris.

The new museum, which will make accessible all 600 watercraft, thousands of small artifacts and an archive, is designed by an award-winning team of heneghan peng architects (Dublin, Ireland) with Kearns Mancini Architects (Toronto, Canada). The museum has partnered with world-class exhibition design firm GSM Project to create one-of-a-kind visitor experiences.

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Peterborough's Flying Colours Corp. Is Celebrating 30th Anniversary

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Flying Colours Corp.—the North American maintenance, repair, overhaul and completions business—is celebrating 30 years of successful MRO and interiors operations.

Launched as an aircraft painting business by current President, John Gillespie, the start-up developed into an aircraft sales business before evolving into a fully-fledged MRO and interiors business in 1989.

John Gillespie, Founder and President of Flying Colours Corp.

The privately owned, family run company has grown from a small hangar dedicated to painting turbo-props and small jets at Peterborough Airport to an international company known for:

-> its strong maintenance capabilities
-> creative cabin-interior design resulting in functional, yet stylish completions
-> refurbishments including Flying Colours branded CRJ ExecLiner
-> avionics expertise
-> ability to handle complex special mission projects

Flying Colours is now the largest airport tenant and is currently expanding its headquarter’s footprint with the addition of a fourth hangar measuring more than 100,000 squared feet.

A rendering of the new hangar due to open in mid-2019

“It’s a well-known fact that the business aviation sector is a competitive and challenging industry to succeed in, and we are extremely proud to be marking our 30th anniversary,” says John Gillespie, Founder and President.

Photo courtesy Flying Colours Corp.

“In some ways, it feels like we are just getting started as we still have a lot of exciting plans to implement over the next decades,” adds Gillespie.

“It goes without saying we would not have got to where we are without the support of our elite set of customers, our reliable long-term partners, and most importantly our highly motivated and skilled technical teams.”

Photo courtesy Flying Colours Corp.

Flying Colours is marking its 30th year with internal and external events with customers, partners and its growing in-house team to demonstrate its gratitude to those that have worked and supported the business through the years. 

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Watch: Ashlee Aiken On "PTBOCanada" Show Talking About The Impact Of Kawartha Food Share

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On Episode 35 of “PTBOCanada”, we sit down with Kawartha Food Share General Manager Ashlee Aitken to learn about the huge role the organization plays in the community—and how the community gives back.

Neil Morton in conversation with Ashlee Aiken

Aitken tells PTBOCanada that it’s a big operation running Kawartha Food Share, which has a lean staff. They have 37 agencies they look after and 51 schools that are accessing food all the time.

“We have about a 100 volunteers a week in there… without them, we’d really be nowhere,” she says. Indeed, Kawartha Food Share is feeding about 9,000 clients a month at food banks.

Watch the episode below…

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Over $80,000 Raised In 10th Annual Petes Pink in the Rink Game

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The 10th Annual Pink in the Rink game took place at the Peterborough Memorial Centre on Saturday night (February 2nd).

The Petes may have lost on the ice—6-3 to the Oshawa Generals—but the entire night was a huge win for the organization and community as over $80,000 was raised to fight cancer.

The Petes, in association with the Canadian Cancer Society, announced that the campaign raised $80,811.11, bringing the 10 year total to over $697,000.

A season-high 3,852 fans attended the game—the team’s highest attended game since Pink in the Rink on February 9th, 2013.

The Petes players wore special Pink in the Rink fundraising sweaters, which were sold in a post-game live jersey auction.

Petes alumni Steve Larmer (1977-78) and Cameron Mann (1993-97) were the honourary co-chairs of this year’s Pink in the Rink campaign.

Congrats to all involved!

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A Peterborough Man Built An Awesome Backyard Curling Rink & Rocks For About $100, Eh

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You hear a lot about backyard rinks but not backyard curling rinks. Well Aaron Kempf managed to MacGyver a mint one in his Peterborough backyard—all at a cost of only about $100.

Kempf fashioned lights across his backyard in the summer so he could ride his pump track—a type of off-road terrain for cycle sport—after his daughter went to bed, and the rink was a way to continue to take advantage of the lights throughout the winter and also a good excuse to get out of the house on winter nights. 

Below is his summer cycle track (the rink he built would be constructed on the opposite side of the yard)…

HOW HE MADE THE RINK

“Construction was as simple as I could make it,” says Kempf, who describes himself as “handyish” depending on what the project is and how good the YouTube videos are. “I came across this idea last year and wanted to give it a try. It is basically a landscaping project which I’m comfortable with as it has a high threshold for mistakes. We like having projects on the go so this was a pretty easy one to try.”

At first, Kempf tried just shoveling snow in order to make a rink outline but the first few snow falls they got in November and December all melted. “In early January, I bought a couple 1x4s and made a rough frame for the rink. I then spent a weekend spraying several thin coats of water,” he tells PTBOCanada.

Kempf says the 1x4s did not create a water tight seal so he chipped a bunch of ice from a couple puddles that had formed in the corners of the pump track and used that to fill the gaps. After that, he continued slowly flooding it.

“There were a few leaks along the way,” Kempf says. “Next year, I’ll probably build a sturdier frame and line it with plastic to keep our water usage down. After I had an even coat of ice across the whole rink and it was thick enough to walk on, I installed the rings.”

The outer blue rings are two round plastic tablecloths he got from Dollarama. Kempf measured so each ring was a foot wide and cut the excess off. The red rings are from a single rectangle plastic tablecloth—also from Dollarama. He cut it in half and freehanded two circles with a sharpie and a pair of scissors. After that, he set them on the ice and flooded overtop a few times.

The rink was made on the opposite side of the yard from the pump track

HOW HE MADE THE CURLING STONES

The rocks were made from two $1.25 metal bowls from Dollar Tree—”the bowls at Dollarama were twice the price and too tall,” says Kempf, who punched a hole through the top of half of them with a screwdriver and then cut out a rough circle with a jigsaw.

“I used construction adhesive to attach them together, filled them with concrete and inserted some threaded metal pipe for the handles. Once they were set I trimmed the handles so they wouldn’t stick out passed the edge of the bowl, inserted a small piece of foam on each handle and wrapped them in blue and red hockey tape.”

The last step in creating the rocks required cutting a slit out of foam backer rod with an razer blade and wrapping it around each rock.

“This is to minimize damage to the bowls when they hit each other as I’m not working with an actual chunk of granite like a real curling rock,” explains Kempf. “They are probably half the size and weight of regulation curling rocks but they work well with the dimensions of the rink (about 8’ by 30’).”

After all this ingenuity, it was time to chillax and throw the rocks in the tee (hopefully)…

AARON’S WIFE ALIX GIVING IT A TRY

The family has made good use of the rink thus far, including Aaron’s wife Alix and his folks who are in town from British Columbia for a couple weeks of visiting.

Aaron’s Dad

Kempf himself is no Olympic curler or anything—”I have curled once in my life before this, watched it on TV a few times, and course seen the Paul Gross classic Men with Brooms—but that’s besides the point.

He’s not the best skater so a traditional rink didn’t make sense, wanted to take advantage of Canadian winter, of having a backyard (“we moved from a Toronto apartment a few years ago so we are trying to make the most of it”), plus Google made it look relatively easy to build.


And if you build it, they will come…

Die-hard curlers, might say—as Kempf notes—that the ice isn’t perfect. “I didn’t try to pebble it, and anyone with actual curling skills would probably be irritated with the imperfections.”

But like any sport and any rink, you have to start somewhere. And why not hurry hard and sweep on your DIY backyard curling rink in Peterborough? 

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Peterborough Humane Society Has 8 Adorable Potcake Puppies To Adopt

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The Peterborough Humane Society has eight healthy, happy and busy potcake puppies that are now available for adoption.

These adorable pups from the Bahamas have been in the care of the Peterborough Humane Society for the past six weeks and are now ready to go to their forever homes. Puppies are not often available, so this is a wonderful opportunity for the community and the team at the PHS to enjoy the wonder of cute, wiggly puppies.

There has been much interest in these puppies—Embrace, Destra, Happy, Welcome, Beta, Alpha, Delta and Friend. The cost to adopt a puppy is $500. They have received their Rabies vaccine, are spayed or neutered, and have been microchipped. 

The puppies are a variety of mixed breeds but will all grow to become medium sized dogs. 

An application must be presented to the team at the shelter (385 Lansdowne Street East) in person between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 31st.  (Note: No applications over the phone or email will be accepted.)

All applications will be reviewed by their Operations Manager to ensure that they find these beautiful pups their new forever home!

The Peterborough Humane Society advocates for the welfare of animals by improving their lives, alleviating suffering, rescuing, providing shelter, healing, facilitating adoption and reducing pet overpopulation.

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TAS Dance Program Hosting Huge Community Event Thursday, 11 Local Dance Organizations Participating

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The TAS Dance Program is hosting a huge community charity event this Thursday evening (January 31st) at 7 p.m. in the TAS auditorium.

Eleven local dance studios, schools and organizations are coming together to perform. Each group chose a charity and they are donating all proceeds from the door between these charities.

Photo by Sara Connelly

The show includes more than 200 dance students from the community. Participating dance studios include…

-> A. Frost Dance Experience (Charity: Make A Wish Foundation)
-> Imagine Studios (Charity: Parkinson Canada)
-> Jubilation Studios (Charity: Alzheimer Society)
-> Kenner Dance Team (Charity: Teachers For Kids)
-> LCS Dance Company (Charity: Because I’m A Girl Campaign)
-> Move N’ Groove Dance Studio (Charity: Diabetes Association)
-> Peterborough PAC Dance Studio (Charity: Lakefield Animal Welfare Society)
-> Premiere Studio of Dance (Charity: Hospice Peterborough)
-> Revolutions Dance Studio (Charity: Sick Kids Hospital)
-> St. Peter’s Dance Team (Charity: Yes Shelter)
-> Thomas A. Stewart Dance Program (Charity: PRHC Mombassadors Campaign)

Tickets are $10 at the door for the show, which takes place in the TAS auditorium. 11 local dance organizations. 11 charities. 1 night.

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