Cox's Cove receives funding to erect building to house ice plant for Marshall-Moores Arena

If everything goes right, the days of waiting for sub-zero temperatures to make ice are over for residents of Cox’s Cove.

Perry Sheppard is pretty pumped about the future of the stadium after receiving a $31,471 grant to erect a building to house an ice plant that will allow the recreation committee to make artificial ice.

Cox’s Cove was one of 48 communities in Newfoundland and Labrador that will see improvements to their infrastructure this year as part of a $10.6 investment by the provincial government through its three-year Municipal Capital Works program.

The ice plant has been donated to the Town of Cox’s Cove by Jack Rowe of Hay River, Alta.

A few years back, Rowe formed a friendship with former Cox’s Cove recreation committee member Jack Brockway, a man who put his heart and soul into trying to get an ice plant for the Marshall-Moores Arena back in the 1970s.

The two men would chat over coffee every morning before heading off to work. During one of their morning chats Rowe was telling Brockway about a curling rink he had purchased from the Town of Burin.

Brockway mentioned to Rowe that Cox’s Cove might be interested in the plant. Brockway contacted Sheppard a year ago to discuss this information.

Sheppard said Brockway was told to check and see if there was an interest in buying it, but when Rowe realized Cox’s Cove is only a tiny town he told Brockway that he would donate the ice plant if somebody was willing to take care of removing the ice plant from the property.

Sheppard said arrangements are being made this week to have the ice plant delivered to Cox’s Cove and that’s something that has him in an upbeat mood this week.

There’s still a lot of work to be done to figure out how the town will go about installing the plant and what other work will have to complement it, but Sheppard wanted to see it all come to fruition so she stayed on top of it even though he took the past year off from his work with the recreation committee.

“We have to see what it’s going to take to install,” he said.