On October 29, the Niverville High School (NHS) gymnasium hosted its first major event—the official ribbon-cutting ceremony of the school’s grand opening. Students, staff, community leaders, dignitaries, and residents all turned up for the auspicious occasion.
Hanover School Division Superintendent Randy Dueck emceed the event, calling on numerous delegates to speak. Music was provided by the NHS jazz band, led by music teacher Jennifer Horne.
“On March 23, 2018, on a cool and windy day, we stood outside, just west of the arena… and broke ground with a sod-turning ceremony,” said Shannon Friesen, chairperson of the Building Committee. “Five hundred and thirty days later, on September 4, 2019, students entered the building for the very first time… Seeing all the smiles and looks of awe and amazement on the students’ faces as they walked through the doors for the first day was pure joy.”
Ron Schuler, MLA for Ritchot-Springfield, teased students that, even though this gymnasium boasts the highest ceiling of any in the province, they’d already managed to lodge two sports balls in the rafters above.
“When [Minister Goertzen] and I started to design this, we decided that we’d spend money on a bigger gym,” Schuler said. “We did it for you, the next generation.”
Randy Dueck then shared his pleasure in being involved in the creation of a facility as unique as this one, which combines a high school and Community Resource and Recreation Centre (CRRC) into one shared campus.
“This particular school is part of a shared vision and dream between Hanover School Division and the Town of Niverville for a dynamic community campus like none other in this province,” Dueck said. “What a way to celebrate 50 years [for your community]!”
Mayor Myron Dyck took the crowd on a brief storytelling tour on the history of the campus’s beginnings. In 2014, he said, town council was taking a serious look at a $2 million outdoor swimming pool project. At the same time, conversations were taking place with HSD regarding the impending need for a new high school. At the time, forecasts suggested a new school would not be granted by the province until sometime after 2020.
“Fast forward to 2016,” says Dueck. “The Town of Niverville residents, through a survey, say they do not want a pool and instead would like an indoor recreation centre… as Niverville has way more winter months than summer months… In August of 2016, council announces they will be setting aside $5 million towards a new indoor rec centre and has plans drawn up for a $20 million project that will only get done if other levels of government step up to assist.”
By fall of 2017, HSD was assuring council that Niverville was at the top of the ask list for a new school. Even so, no one anticipated the province to make an announcement any time soon.
The year 2017 was also the year of Canada’s one hundred fiftieth birthday and government announcements were made touting the availability of recreation facility grant monies across the nation. Council began the laborious work of securing some of that funding.
“On a beautiful spring morning in 2018, I’m driving between work appointments when I hear on the radio news that Niverville is being awarded a new high school,” Dyck says. “It was very exciting and very unexpected.”
In that moment, however, Dyck also began to doubt that grant money would be forthcoming for the CRRC.
“From my experience as a politician, if a community gets a grant for one thing, then the likelihood of a second one is very [low], as provincial and federal officials like to make all of their communities happy before giving one community another grant,” says Dyck. “Thus, while excited, to be honest I felt like the… CRRC was dead.”
Through proceeding council discussions, a new idea was hatched: to join the new school to the recreation centre, combining forces with the school division and appealing to the province for funding for a much different project. As well, council believed that such a design would allow funding that had already been promised to go much further.
Council was faced with a brief opportunity to secure land for the CRRC, convince HSD to collaborate on the plan, and then assemble lawyers, consultants, and professionals to create architectural designs to send a convincing message to higher levels of government.
“It involved a lot of people working a lot of long days,” Dyck says. “During this time of great urgency, I reached out to the Hanover School Division superintendent to share this vision. I cannot tell you how thankful I am today that not only did Randy agree to meet, but he listened… It would have been very easy to say no and the Niverville CRRC project would have been dead right there.”
Finally, in the spring of 2019, council received notice that their application for a $20 million grant for the CRRC had been approved by both federal and provincial governments.
“So, while today is about a high school grand opening, it really is so much more,” Dyck said. “What started out as a $2 million [swimming] pool in 2014 turned into a $5 million [town] commitment for a CRRC, that turned into a $22 million project for a school, that turned into a $40 million centrepiece for our community.”
During the ceremony, special mention also went out to Gord Daman for his tireless work on the project, developer Cornell Friesen for donating the land on which the school and future CRRC sit, and Carl Fast of Wm. Dyck & Sons, who outfitted the school’s workout room with $30,000 in exercise equipment in memory of his late father, Alex Fast.
Honoured attendees for the ribbon-cutting included Kelvin Goertzen, Minister of Education; MP Ron Schuler; Mayor Myron Dyck; Ted Falk, MP for Provencher; and students Katey Hiebert and Dominic Augusto.
A key-passing ceremony also took place, a tradition within the construction community to recognize those who play leading roles in the planning, design, and construction of big projects such as this one. The honourees who passed the key included a Public School Finance Board representative, the lead architect of MCM Architects, the project manager of Red Lake Construction, HSD’s Director of Facilities, NHS Principal Kim Funk, and student Nick Johnson.
Student leadership co-presidents Arabella Zeilstra and Sawyer Pauls then shared their thanks on behalf of every student of NHS.
“The TVs in every room, the space we have to work, and the comfortable seating area of the Learning Commons makes for a very non-stressful environment, which I know that all the students love,” said Zeilstra. “This makes learning and wanting to learn that much easier.”