Collège Boréal's Sudbury campus has the smallest gym of all of Ontario's 24 colleges. It's so small, it's difficult for its varsity teams to train there or to host sports tournaments in the facility.
But that's about to change.
Four years ago, Boréal students circulated a petition, asking for an upgrade to the Francophone college's sports facilities.
Yesterday, their wishes came true. The college announced it's planning an $8.6-million wellness centre, which will include an expanded gym, indoor track and revamped fitness facilities.
The wellness centre will be used for research on aging and physical fitness, and will be a great resource for students who need to keep fit as a requirement of their program.
There'll even be a greenhouse on the roof of the facility for the use of the college's agricultural students.
Even better (for the college and the students who pay tuition to attend), Boréal won't have to pay for the upgrades by itself.
At a Sept. 7 press conference, Sudbury MP Paul Lefebvre and Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré jointly announced that the federal government is kicking in about $4 million from its Post-Secondary Strategic Investment Fund to fund the upgrade, with an additional $200,000 coming from the province through its Facility Renewals Program.
Boréal also announced Wednesday it's receiving $1.5 million in federal and provincial funds to build new classrooms at its Windsor campus, located in a building not specifically built for education.
Between the two projects, Boréal is receiving about $5.7 million from the federal and provincial governments.
The announcement came a day after another local post-secondary institution — Laurentian University — was basking in the glow of a large government funding announcement. On Tuesday, the university revealed a total of $114 million in private and government funding, including $49.2 million from the federal government's Canada First Research Excellence Fund.
Collège Boréal president Daniel Giroux, who's on his first week on the job after the retirement of previous Boréal president Pierre Riopel, said it's been a great week all around.
“For me to start a new employment and to have a funding announcement — I'll start a new job every week,” he said. “I'm starting off with a bang.”
Lefebvre said the wellness centre is good for Collège Boréal and by extension, Sudbury.
“Collège Boréal acts as a huge magnet for the French population across Ontario,” he said.
“They come here to study. The fact that their facilities were not up to par, it hurt in their recruiting. Now with this investment, the facilities will be more up to date, more responsive to the students' needs, and also the programs that they will be creating will be second to none across the province.”
Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault said it's great that the provincial and federal governments are working together to make projects like this happen.
“It's great to see what's going to happen here at Collège Boréal with the physical infrastructure they're getting,” he said. “Really, we're benefitting the students, which in the long run is going to help us all.”
