The Sydenham Sportsmen’s Association is working to determine the full cost of repairing its fish hatchery following a roof collapse.
The club’s Vice President Chris Geberdt says a hatchery roof collapsed under the weight of heavy snow last Tuesday, buckling the walls and causing significant damage and threatening the fish inside.
“With all of the snow that we’ve gotten over the last three weeks we’ve tried to get help to shovel off, but our members are older and the number of homes that contractors were dealing with, it was next to impossible.”
Geberdt says when he heard of the collapse, he called Roger Haviland of AM Group Exteriors, who rallied a number of workers to shovel the collection of hatchery building roofs off to prevent further collapse. The hatchery is located at the old Creamery Hill farm property just beyond the edge of Owen Sound.
Its fish are used to stock the Owen Sound Salmon Spectacular fishing derby which happens every summer and brings in about $2.8 million to the local economy annually.
He says, “We saved the one part of the hatchery but number three hatchery in the back totally collapsed. And then on Thursday we put a crew together and rescued 60,000 rainbow (trout) that were in there and moved them to hatchery number 2.”
Geberdt says it took the work of lots of people with lots of buckets to scoop up the fish and move them to another hatchery on the same property.
Overall, he says they have nearly 100,000 salmon in their hatcheries and between 50.000 and 60,000 rainbow trout.
Geberdt doesn’t think they’ll get the full amount from the insurance company to replace the hatchery, and guesses it will cost over $125,000. “It’s not a cheap part of the hatchery,” he says, noting he’s meeting with their insurance company this week.
“When you get a snow dumping of that in less than a week— I’ve been in the club 50 years. I’ve never seen anything like this ever.”
He adds, “We lost our 22 range, and Geberdt says he’s heard there are hundreds of structures in Grey Bruce that were damaged by the heavy snow. This is not a ‘why didn’t you shovel the snow off? This is more than that.”
He says the club just put a brand new roof on the 22 range. “All the 4x4s buckled,” says Geberdt, who, on Thursday night, alongside Stacey Urbshott’s family and the ‘French Connection’ to those who know him, shovelled it off.
He says the club will try to internally rebuild the range with the help of some members who are carpenters.
Geberdt says Glen Worsley, a Harriston based charter boat captain who uses the fishery started a GoFundMe page to help them rebuild. Its goal is $5,000.
“It’s been overwhelming the amount of support from the community,” says Geberdt, explaining “Contractors and people in the community that want to help. That’s a real positive. There’s a lot of positives. My dad always used to say, you can’t sit back and thank of the negatives. You’ve got to think of the positive things that have happened. Nobody was hurt. We saved the fish, and now we rebuild.”
“There’s a lot of people that don’t realize— they think the Salmon Spectacular happens in ten days. The fish stocking is 365 days a year. So those fish we put in, doesn’t just bring fishermen, and fisherwomen and fishing kids to the derby. It’s year round. The fishery for this town is just multi million dollars worth and the salmon spectacular is one little entity of that.”
Geberdt says the Sydenham Sportsmen’s Association has many offshoots and has several programs in the community. He says they have been putting bat boxes in the community at properties that have had bat problems. They build bird boxes, plan Earth Day events, plant wldflowers and work with the YMCA to get new immigrants involved in conservation activities.
“I could talk all day about the number of things we do just in our community,” says Geberdt.
He adds, “The MNRF has even reached out to us and said ‘Hey how can we help? Anything you need, let us know.”
“That to me, is what you call community involvement and community working together,” says Geberdt.
You can also donate to the Sydenham Conservation Foundation at box 264 Stn Main Owen Sound, N4K 5P3 and you can get a tax receipt.
The phone number at the clubhouse is 519-376-7177.
Geberdt says, “There’s nothing being diverted for wages. Nobody gets paid. We’re all volunteers. So it will go 100 per cent back into the fish hatchery.”
