The Burns Lake Timbermen hockey club has completed its inaugural season. Controversy surrounded the team, by season’s end, over behaviour exhibited in the community by some players and over business issues especially between the players’ families and the league administrators.
Two letters were mailed to the Village of Burns Lake to complain, in detail, about some of those concerns. Since the Timbermen use civic facilities and resources, there is a relevant connection to local government, so it was brought to the attention of mayor and council at their April 11 meeting.
Council agreed to send a letter of acknowledgement back to the two letter writers indicating they would taken under advisement.
Chief administrative officer Sheryl Worthing said “I did have a chat with (director of recreation Lewis Jones) today about this. He will have a year-end review with the Timbermen - the administration of that group. He hasn’t had that yet. He has heard that they want to come back for a second season, but he is not positive. He indicated he will address these concerns with them, even though there’s really nothing we can do about their issues. But he will certainly be passing them along.”
Worthing indicated there were some concerns brought up about the Village of Burns Lake’s end of the bargain.
One was a problem with timely access to facilities, and Worthing said that access is, by policy, not given until payment has been received so once that happened, access was granted.
Another point of contention was regarding cleaning at the arena. The agreement was that the team would look after a certain amount of it, and that would be better specified in any future agreements, should they reach that point.
The Timbermen play in the Greater Metro Hockey League (GMHL), at the Junior-A level. They are unaffiliated with Hockey Canada or BC Hockey. The players on the team are required to pay a fee to the league in order to play, and an additional monthly fee to their host family, should they be from out of town and in need of accommodation. This pay structure is common throughout Junior hockey.
The GMHL had teams in the local area based in Tumbler Ridge (folded during the season), Mackenzie, and Kitimat. Despite having only three teams, some had difficulty icing enough players for a viable game without borrowing from other teams.