Fire at Lakewood Park boardwalk postpones fishing derby

The Fishing Derby in Tecumseh, hosted by the Optimist Club, has been postponed until further notice due to a fire set along a portion of the boardwalk at Lakewood Park North last weekend.

Officials closed it down on Wednesday due to the vandalism on the boards, which posed a safety risk. 

Beth Gignac, Tecumseh’s Director of Community & Recreation Services, says luckily for them a resident saw the fire in the early morning hours so the Tecumseh Fire Department was able to put the fire out before it spread.

She says it’s a wood boardwalk, and there’s a lot of trees in the park, so it was a crisis averted.

“So as a result we got in there and the damage was pretty significant. We thought we needed to fence off and close the area for public safety, which we did. And decided to make the prudent decision to replace the entire boardwalk actually with a brand new concrete slab that would prevent further acts of vandalism going forward in the park,” she said.

Gignac is expecting the project to take two to two and a half weeks to complete, and they will work with the Optimist Club to reschedule and help them with promotion ahead of the new date.

Given the wildfire situation all across Canada at the moment, Gignac says it’s very distressing and disappointing to see something like this happen to a public amenity like a park.

She says vandalism of any kind is bad, and costs municipalities money they weren’t expecting to spend, so her message to the community is if you see something say something.

“Call Crime Stoppers, call 911 if it’s a crime in process or a vandalism in process that you witness. These are our shared public spaces and we can’t police them 24/7, 365 days of the year. I’m really hoping that folks as a community can come together, look out for each other and look out for these public amenities that quite frankly we’re all paying for.”

The Town of Tecumseh is in the final stages of obtaining a quote from different suppliers that they work with, but Gignac says it could run as high as between $150,000 to $200,000 to replace the boardwalk with the concrete slab.

She’s hopeful the cost will come in lower, and the parks team is doing their fair share by doing all the demo work and taking all of the materials off site which is saving a lot of money.

“But that means those parks crews are not doing other things that they need to be doing like looking after ball diamonds, or cutting grass in neighbourhood parks, or making sure that our tennis courts are neat, clean and tidy. So we’re saving money on the one hand, but it’s definitely impacting service delivery this week on the other hand,” Gignac said.

In the coming weeks Gignac will be bringing a full report to town council where the full costs will be identified and the contractors hired for the project will be identified as well.