“I learned how to swim as a little girl right here at the Dollard des Ormeaux Civic Center on Montreal’s West Island and it sure has changed. It recently underwent renovations to make it more welcoming and it’s opening back up to the public including many community groups. The renovations cost approximately $400,000 from public funds.”
Mayor Alex Bottausci said in his inaugural ribbon cutting remarks, “This moment marks a significant milestone for our community. The council and I are honored to share it with all of you.”
Members of the Sahyog Indian Senior’s club, that gather weekly at the DDO Civic Centre were in attendance. Paras Singh Bhandari shared that , “Last year they gave us a hall over here in the Civic Center to celebrate our biggest function of Diwali.”
Paramjit Nag, also from Sahyog, shared that, “The city giving us a nice place which we can accommodate easily about 60 to 70 members. It’s very neat and clean, very easily located and we have a big yard in the front that we can go and we can in summers we play outdoor games and activities.”
DDO Mayor Bottausci, passionately explained, “This is our Centre Civic, our hub.
“It brings the entire community together and for us the reason why we renovated it the way we did is so that it has everybody come together and everybody could just come here, sit back, have a cup of coffee, whether you’re here for your kids, you’re dropping them off or you’re a senior’s resident that’s coming along doing some type of painting class.”
“There’s something for everybody to do and this will be the local hangout.”
Nag explained, “I think Civic Center gave us opportunity and exposure to all the different activities which can provide us fitness and health and a lot of get-togethers where they give lectures about health, nutrition.”
Mayor Alex Bottausci was born in DDO. He says, “I would have never imagined that I would have become the mayor when I was a kid.
“The only thing I can tell you is I enjoyed so much growing up in this community and every day that goes by in my role being able to give back to a community that I grew up in, and build relationships with people that I still have friends today is just priceless.”
“It’s being able to give children an opportunity, access, access to playing sports whether it’s organized or not organized, having them to go out on the field and build those friendships.
“There’s no price that you could ever attach to something like that and for me that’s the only thing that I wish upon every child to be able to have.”
Paras shared, “They give us a place to get together on every Saturday for four hours, one hour senior from our community and other communities.
Nag explained, “The City of DDO has given us you know contributed with the funds that we utilize in carrying on the activities. We have instructors who can give us yoga classes for seniors fitness.
“We do have physiotherapists.”
“We also have you know IT professional teaching seniors how to use their telephone, how to stay away from the scams that they might end up having scams over the phone and also to use how to send emails and communicate using the technology.
“At their age which they’re not very familiar and we also like to give them in future you know French classes just the basic how to speak and go to the at least hospital and explain what problem they have to see a doctor just to communicate.
“Because at that age they cannot be very fluently like youngsters but little bit to manage around their community we’re trying to put efforts in those things.
“It is very helpful from them that they give us a place for every week and this is a very very open space and they have a lot of you know things to see and there are a lot of spaces where you can celebrate your parties and occasions and also it is a very very beautiful place; they made a lot of efforts to make it good and people like it.”