The claim: In an August 5 post on his official campaign Facebook page, Mayor Eric Woodward called the new Arena #1 at the Langley Events Centre “the first additional, new ice arena built in the Township of Langley for non-profit and community use in almost 50 years.”
The verdict: FALSE (and a two-minute penalty for embellishment). Three facilities and six sheets of community ice say otherwise. Here are the facts.
1. The Langley Events Centre itself opened with ice – in 2009. The Township built the LEC, which opened in April 2009 with a 5,276-seat arena bowl that has hosted hockey ever since, including minor hockey, university hockey, provincial championships, and the Vancouver Giants (The Giants recently announced they are moving to Surrey; this will add even more hours for minor hockey at LEC). A new ice arena, built in the Township, 17 years ago. That fact alone sinks the claim — the mayor’s “almost 50 years” arena is next door to one built in 2009.
2. The Sportsplex added four sheets of community ice starting in 1999. The Langley Sportsplex opened two rinks in Walnut Grove on September 1, 1999, and added a third and fourth over the next decade. Yes, it is privately owned – but as the Langley Advance News and Langley Times reported at the time, the Township helped make it happen and made sure it served the community. Back then, Council signed an ice agreement securing 109 hours of ice per week for local user groups like Langley Minor Hockey, then extended it to ten years at a cost of about $4 million. (This amount has gone up since.) Non-profit and community skaters have filled those four rinks every week for 27 years.
3. The Township opened a new arena in Aldergrove in 2018. Don’t take our word for it — take the Township’s own website: a new NHL-sized arena with seating for more than 900 opened at the Aldergrove Credit Union Community Centre on August 18, 2018, home to the Aldergrove Kodiaks, Aldergrove Minor Hockey, and the Aldergrove Skating Club. It replaced the 1973 arena – and that’s the work the word “additional” is doing in the mayor’s sentence: quietly deleting a beautiful new community arena the Township built eight years ago.
4. Even the oldest arena in town hasn’t stood still. The George Preston Recreation Centre, open since 1972, has been refreshed again and again. The arena got a $700,000 makeover with upgraded lighting, better ice and humidity control, a new video display, mezzanine seating, and a new lodge-style front. Then came a nearly $5 million round of renovations finished in 2019: new roof, new HVAC, new plumbing, new rooms. Langley’s community rinks haven’t been frozen in time for 50 years. They’ve been built, expanded, replaced, and renewed the whole way through.
The bottom line: If it was on the ice, that post would get a penalty for embellishment – selling contact that never happened to try and draw a call. It takes “additional” to erase Aldergrove and ownership fine print to erase the Sportsplex’s four rinks – but the Township’s own 2009 Langley Events Centre still breaks it. Facts don’t need this much stickhandling.
The new building, which cost nearly three times the original LEC and is financed by debt and Township taxes, will no doubt be well-used. But that shouldn’t start with a rewrite of th e last 27 years of this community’s history.
