The home of the Loreburn 19ers is about to get a $20,000 improvement after being named one of five grand winners of a Mars Bars Play Your Part Promotion.
The contest was open to rinks across Canada with five eventually moving to the final round and a chance of $20,000 if they could get enough pins, found in the wrappers of Mars Bars, entered online. Loreburn faced off in the final round against rinks in Mission, B. C., London, Ont., Warwick, Que. and Marsh Lake, Yukon.
Vanessa Tastad, Loreburn recreation board president and village councillor, said the whole village jumped behind the cause. She said, if chosen, the arena proposed to paint, add stick racks and door closures and install new flooring in their two new dressing rooms at the 48-year-old arena, which sees around 50 skaters come through its doors weekly for their hockey, figure and public skating fix.
“Everyone was pretty pumped around here through the whole cause,” said Tastad. “The rink sold just Mars Bars. The (high school) football team sold Mars Bars at their games and anything that the school had on sold Mars Bars. Everybody was entering pins and they’d drop them off for me to enter at the RM office too. Everyone was really good.”
Tastad said she found out they had been selected to receive the $20,000 prize through a phone call from Mars Bars on Dec. 27, with the announcement going national Jan. 8 informing all five rinks that they would get the full $20,000 for their great work getting their communities rallied around the cause.
“It was a pretty good Christmas present,” she said.
Loreburn is scheduled to receive the cheque by the end of January with the improvements beginning in February or March. Tastad said they will first have to get “organized” concerning getting quotes for the work, but the $20,000 will fully cover everything that needs to be done.
“We have two other dressing rooms that we can use while we’re in the process (of renovating), so we’ll be able to keep the rink running through the work,” she said.
Tastad said she first sent in the application to Mars Bars in March and were informed they advanced to the second round of competition two months later. They was picked as one of the five finalists in June and the community has been eating nothing but Mars Bars ever since.

Federal Liberal Party leadership candidate Marc Garneau is making the West a priority in an effort to build Liberal memberships in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia as those provinces take over the economic engine of Canada.
Garneau was in Saskatoon Jan. 10 meeting with students at the University of Saskatchewan on another stop in his cross-country tour of Canada.
“The centre of gravity, economically speaking for the country, has shifted to the West,” said Garneau, who represents the Quebec riding of Westmount–Ville-Marie. “If you look at the province of Saskatchewan, it has a booming economy with great resources (like) uranium, potash and of course grains as well as oil and gas. It also has strong potential with respect to the knowledge-based economy with great universities and good companies.
“There is a great shift in terms of where things are at in Canada economically speaking, so the message that I carry when I go to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia is that I understand how the situation has changed and how important the West is.”
Garneau, 63, said he entered the Liberal leadership race on Nov. 20 due to this desire to change the focus of the country’s economic policy. He said the economic centre of the world has shifted to Asia where there is a high demand for western Canadian resources and, as a result, Canada must find an “efficient way” to get these resources to countries like China and India.
To demonstrate a way to do this, Garneau released his four-point economic strategy earlier this year, which includes a desire for open foreign investment in Canada under transparent and concrete rules, an investment in transportation infrastructure for resources moving to the BC coast for shipment to Asia, environmental protection based on scientific evidence and partnerships with aboriginal communities through resource revenue sharing.
While he believes this may be a start in keeping Canada on a strong footing economically, Garneau said these changes couldn’t right the ship all by themselves. He said with an aging population and underused youth that Canada will not be able to keep up with powerhouses China and India unless an investment is made in a “knowledge-based economy” as well.
“The Harper government is only focused on resource development, but should also focus on diversifying the economy,” he said. “On occasion the price of a resource is going to go down, because there are fluctuations in the world market and in world demand for our resources.
“Having a diversified economy means focusing on trying to exploit that other wealth within this country, which is its people. It’s a focus on putting in place a federal policy that will help to make us more innovative in this country and more competitive with respect to other countries.”
To read more please see the January 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.