Greater Sudbury Northern Life
The Steelworkers are putting a positive spin on the devastating arson that crumbled their hall to the ground two and a half months ago.
On Sept. 19, the Steelworkers Hall on Frood Road went up in flames. Millions of dollars of damage was done to the building, leaving demolition as the only option after the fire had been doused.
The Greater Sudbury Police Service set up an arson task force dedicated to solving the Steelworkers Hall fire, as well as other arsons that had plagued the city.
United Steelworkers International donated $15,000 to Crime Stoppers in an effort to draw tips from the community, and bring the case to a rapid close. The added money turned out not to be incentive enough for the tipsters to come forward with information leading to an arrest and the money was left untouched.
However, in early November, two 12-year-old boys were arrested and charged with the Steelworkers Hall arson.
Leo Gerard, USW International president, was at police headquarters Monday afternoon to announce the reward allocated for Crime Stoppers would instead be donated to the police service.
After meeting with union representatives, it was decided $10,000 of the reward would be used to benefit the youth in the community, in particular, through the Chief's Youth Initiative Fund, which contributes money to local youth agencies on behalf of the Greater Sudbury Police Service.
The additional $5,000 was donated to the Steelworkers Local 6500 to put on its annual children's Christmas party. Because of the fire, the party had to be moved to a new location, tacking additional costs onto the group.
“On behalf of our union, we're tremendously pleased and we're proud of the work that was done by the police and fire departments,” he said. “When we found the arson had been solved ... it was both a happy and a sad announcement — happy that the issue was solved ... but extremely sad that in our city, a couple of 12 years olds were allegedly responsible for this.”
Chief of Police Ian Davidson said the money will be used in two ways. The first is to create a youth advisory committee, which “will help us carefully examine the services we provide to young people and to our various partners within the city.”
The second way the money will be used is to develop a youth summit, which will bring together youth, experts and organizations from across the region.
“(It will include) anybody that can put some significant context to the challenges we face in society and see if we can come up with some real solutions that are Sudbury-based,” Davidson said. “We'll see if there's something we can do that's a little more proactive.
“If we can do anything that will take a young person and give them the supports they need to avoid some of the traps that will lead them to the criminal justice system, and ultimately failure, then we should do that,” he added. “There are many kids in this community that just need a little bit of a helping hand ... and we're going to try to do that.”
John Fera, Local 6500 United Steelworkers president, said the donation would assist Steelworkers in the healing process after such a devastating loss.
“The healing has to start, it's an important part of the process,” he said. “Something good has to come out of something so tragic.”
