And with the holiday season just around the corner, the rink opening came at the perfect time to allow borough area residents to lace up their skates and take part in a time-honored Montreal tradition of playing winter hockey in the great outdoors.
The rink, a staple of the Foundation's BLEU BLANC BOUGE program presented by Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, is refrigerated and will act as a multipurpose facility serving the neighbourhood surrounding the De Mesy park in which it is located, and was inaugurated as part of the City of Montreal's 375th anniversary celebrations and the NHL's Centennial.
To help mark the occasion, Max Pacioretty, Jonathan Drouin, Nicolas Deslauriers and Daniel Carr stopped by to test out the ice with some local-area schoolchildren - and the timing couldn't have been more perfect, what with the outdoor Scotiabank NHL100 Classic between the Canadiens and Ottawa Senators coming up in just a few days' time.
For Jonathan Drouin, the rink opening was but another opportunity to give back to the community, in the same vein as the hospital visits he and his teammates had made the day before.
"It changes things, for sure. The Montreal Canadiens do a great job to help young people, to support those in need with things like this," outlined No. 92. "It allows us to disconnect from hockey."
Last year, over 7,000 children were active on the eight BLEU BLANC BOUGE rinks already open, bringing the total number of people who have skated on the rinks to over 400,000 since 2009.
And with an investment of more than $1.4 million per rink, the Foundation's executive director, Genevieve Paquette, is proud of the impact the project has had, particularly in helping immigrants adapt to a new culture and climate.
"For the Foundation, every rink is a great gift. Yes, it's a nice rink and a nice facility, but it's also a way of life that we're building for young people, so they can learn how to keep active," explained Paquette. "In disadvantaged neighborhoods where there are a lot of newcomers, it's a nice way of helping people integrate and get used to the Quebec winters. It's a great day for us."
