Time to think outside the (cardboard) box

 It's not the kind of municipal spending that will create jobs, roads, services or facilities.

Well, OK, maybe you could call it a “facility,” but it's not the kind you use to swim, run, skate or do any kind of business.

All you do is look at it.

And be inspired.

The Brockville and Area Sports Hall of Fame is not one of those things that keeps a city running as it should be. It's one of those things that makes a city worth running in the first place.

And $5,700 is not too much to spend to keep it going for at least another decade.

As my former colleague Ron Smith told city council's finance, administration and operations committee yesterday, the hall of fame's wall of honour at the Memorial Centre is running out of room.

It's gotten to the point where there are 100 plaques on the wall and 15 plaques sitting in a cardboard box.

“That's wrong,” says Smith, a man of few words.

And he is right.

Smith, himself one of the most recent hall of fame inductees, is proposing a two-step solution to the problem that would allow more plaques to go on the hall of fame's current south wall, then onto the east wall of the Memorial Centre vestibule.

That could buy us 10 to 12 more years, he figures.

And the city figures it will cost about $5,700.

I was left scratching my head at that one. Fifty-seven hundred – the price of a decent used car – just to move some lettering around and get about 80 wall mounts installed?

Sounds kinda steep for the kind of job that, were it to be done on an average person's private property, could fall to “some guy we know” who could wrap it up in about an afternoon.

Nevertheless, it's the hall of fame, and the work needs to be done properly.

Some of the names on the list of temporarily removed plaques are towering figures in local sports history.

And some of them (I'm thinking of my late boss, Don Swayne) are probably flipping in their graves.

Some of the people in our local hall of fame have gone on to the big leagues; there are NHLers and Olympians.

Their presence on that wall inspires our children with the possibility of great achievements.

Just as importantly, many others on that wall remind us, constantly, that one does not have to reach the NHL, or make it to the Olympics, to be great.

These things give a community its soul, and give us far more than can be quantified under “minor capital.”

One hopes council will approve the expense quickly when it comes up. And one hopes city officials and the hall of fame committee will have other options to look at – including, quite possibly, a new twin-pad arena – after this added space runs out.