Strap on your skates: Summerside pond restored for winter recreation

A pond in Summerside, P.E.I., is just about ready for skaters after months of work by the local watershed group.

"Maybe even by this afternoon," Tracy Brown, executive director of the Bedeque Bay Environmental Management Association, told Island Morning Wednesday.

"I wouldn't be surprised if some of my staff are out there trying it out. They've been itching to go."

The pond is near Notre Dame Street.

Through the summer months the group hadbeen digging not just silt but also garbage out of the pond to restore it to its original four-metre depth. When they started most of the pond was not much more than a metre deep.

"The last time you had enough open water that would freeze without being embedded with reeds and cattails would probably have been around the '80s," said Brown.

"The surface would have frozen but it would have been an awful bad skating surface."

The pond was once a year-round recreational area for the neighbourhood, and the association is aiming to make it that way again.

"Years ago that's where many people took their kids to teach them how to skate. It's an open, natural experience to be skating out on a pond in nature," said Brown.

It was also the only spot in the city for fresh water fishing, she said. The association has plans for landscaping and trails in the spring. There is a restored fish ladder at one end, and there are hopes the fish will return, and a fishing derby might be possible.

Brown warned skaters that the ice will be thin at the end of the pond near the fish ladder. Association staff have roped off that area and posted warning signs.

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