Crowd upset at announcement of Moose Jaw YMCA closure

Corey Atkinson, Discover Moose Jaw

Disappointment, hard feelings and more than a bit of anger.

Those were the feelings from many who spoke up at a special meeting Tuesday night at the Cosmo Centre, as the YMCA Moose Jaw announced it was closing the doors on the Fairford Street and Athabasca Street locations. The YMCA of Regina takes over responsibility for the child care centres, effective July 2.

Christine Boyczuk said the Moose Jaw YMCA was very close to insolvency, losing $50,000 a month.

“We’re not going to raise $600,000 every year to pay for operations,” she said after the meeting.

Board member Joan Buckmaster said maintaining all of the services status quo just wasn’t going to happen.

“We needed to be able to pay our staff … (who) were terminated, and there were other obligations we needed to pay,” Buckmaster said.

Boyczuk explained the board met more than once a month since it took over about a year ago.

“We had a very sound financial person we met with,” Boyczuk said. “He told us how much we’re losing, what we had to do … (and) he made recommendations. And we basically examined all those recommendations and made the decision we did tonight.”

As Boyczuk and Moose Jaw Y interim CEO Diana Deakin-Thomas presented their side of things, the reaction from the people who attended the meeting was that of extreme disappointment.

Heather Eby had been a member for a few years again after letting her membership lapse, and she was disappointed it will be closing.

“I’m not going to miss the facility, per se; I’m going to miss the programs, and I’m going to miss the people,” said Eby. “For me, the Y is not about a building. It was about the organization, the people and the programs.”

Dave Kelly, a 17-year member of the Moose Jaw Y, expressed his feelings at the meeting and talked afterwards.

“I think the whole community feels let down,” he said after the meeting. “I feel really let down because I’m passionate about keeping the Y in the community. Now that it’s divvied out to Regina just to keep that sliver here. I mean it’s good they kept that one program but everything else is gone.”

Kelly said he was disappointed but not blindsided by the decision to shut down.

“There were lots of rumours out, not confirmed before we got here that it was closing, but once you hear it from the board itself … It was devastating because that’s a 114-year history,” he said. “It’s not just the Y, it’s the tradition of the Y.”

Boyczuk said the worst part of this decision was telling staff over the last couple of days, many of whom had been hearing rumours of its closure.

While the board said the decision to close was unanimous, board member Jeremy Brehm got up in the middle of the meeting, read a brief statement off his phone disagreeing with the decision to close, and left the front of the room where the other board members were to sit in the crowd.

The Moose Jaw Y was the largest provider of licensed child care in Moose Jaw, and now the Regina Y will have its 250 licensed spots for school-aged children at five locations in Moose Jaw.