Skip to content

Official Weekend opening of Elliot Lake's Mount Dufour Terrain Park (3 photos)

Project began in 2018 with a dream and a grant from Elliot Lake Rotary Club has become a reality

It started with a dream and $7,600 from Elliot Lake Rotary club members in late 2018.

With those ingredients, Elliot Lake Secondary School student Devon O'Grady, who won the startup money from "100 Elliot Lakers Who Care", put in motion his plan to build a snowboard terrain park at the base of city-owned Mount Dufour Ski Area in Elliot Lake.

Saturday afternoon Devon and his team along with many of their corporate partners who donated cash and in-kind contributions joined to declare the new park for snowboarders officially open.

Those corporate partners include Big Fish Graphics, the City of Elliot Lake, East Algoma Community Futures Development Corporation, Elliot Lake Retirement Living, ELNOS Corporation for Business Development, JI Enterprises, LH Outdoor Living, Mount Dufour Ski Area, Purych Aerial Marketing and Photography, Rotary Club of Elliot Lake and “The 100 Elliot Lakers Who Care”, Serpent River First Nation Economic Development Corporation and Wendell Farquhar Trucking.

The Terrain Park is a community project that has taken a year and a half to complete. An article in ElliotLakeToday announced the project's beginning and foreshadowed all the work that followed to make the park a reality.

Since then over $35,000 in cash and grants have been raised, and over $50,000 in donations in kind have been secured, along with many hours of volunteerism which have been donated to the park.  

Devon's father Tom O'Grady, a teacher at Elliot Lake Secondary School, issued this statement. 

"We would like to thank the dedicated volunteers who have worked at Mount Dufour Ski Area for over 40 years. These community members have worked, behind the scenes, 12 months of the year to keep our awesome ski hill operating. These volunteers have worked on clearing the land for the original runs, maintaining the land, repairing the lifts and runs and groomers and chalet, providing rental equipment, programming for youth, volunteering to be on the Mount Dufour Board of Directors, applying for grants to help the Ski Hill "stay alive", promotion, signs at the hill, and so much more."

"Without their previous hard work and dedication, and without the continued volunteerism by these people, we would not have been able to create this Terrain Park," O'Grady went on.

The O'Grady's, Tom and Devon, stood astride the final snowboard jump at the Terrain Park as Grade 10 Elliot Lake Secondary School student and snowboarder Andrea Prevost crashed through the ceremonial.ribbon.  It was then that all the work, and the dream, materialized.

The City of Elliot Lake owned Mount Dufour Ski Area opened for the season last Dec. 23. 

 


Comments


About the Author: Brent Sleightholm

As a reporter, Brent has covered everything from amateur and professional sports, to politics, entertainment, police and courts, to human interest stories and government issues
Read more