MACKENZIE — Representatives from the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George got a firsthand look at several landmarks and municipal sites in the District of Mackenzie on Wednesday, June 18, including the community’s multi-million dollar fire hall that opened less than a month ago.
The day before the district’s directors were to have their June regular meeting at Mackenzie’s recreation centre, elected officials and staff were shuttled from place to place in the town located about two hours north of Prince George by car.
After a brief stop at the local landfill, Mayor Joan Atkinson and Deputy Fire Chief Luke Thorne gave the group a tour of the $6.5 million fire hall at 60 Centennial Dr., which had its grand opening on May 24.
The Mackenzie Fire Rescue Department has three staff members and more than 30 volunteers. The previous fire hall opened in 1971.
Atkinson and Thorne explained that most of the funding for the fire hall was announced by former premier John Horgan in Feb. 2019 and construction started either late that year or in early 2020.
That money came as a surprise, Atkinson said, because Mackenzie frequently gets left out of provincial funding programs.
While it was initially supposed to be finished construction within about a year, several building starts had to be torn down and work started over from scratch due to various issues.
Eventually, the contractor walked away and the district’s fire chief took over project management.
The Citizen reported on litigation between contractors working on the project back in 2023.
The fire hall’s first floor contains equipment storage, laundry facilities, a classroom used to train both local firefighters and staff from the BC Wildfire Service, bathrooms with large showers and the garage containing the department’s vehicles.
While in the locker room, Thorne pointed out that each station had a pair of matching red Crocs in them. Until recently, the fire hall had a gravel driveway and the Crocs were used to avoid tracking dirt and debris throughout the building.
Atkinson explained while in the garage that when the district’s most recent fire engine was ordered, the price tag was $1.2 million. Eighteen months later, the price for new orders exceeded $3 million.
The second floor contains a clubhouse of sorts for the Mackenzie Fire Fighters Association, with a kitchen and bar area, a snooker table, a tv area, an outdoor balcony with picnic tables and grills and a small gym on a mezzanine overlooking the garage.
After a drive-by look at the local hospital and trips to the Little Mac ski hill and recreation areas at Morfee Lake, the delegation took a tour of the Mackenzie Recreation Centre at 400 Skeena Dr.
The rec centre offers several multipurpose rooms, an indoor multi-sport court, an indoor playground, the local ice arena and concessions booth, a library, pool and fitness centre.
One of those multi-purpose rooms is named after Leah Callahan, a freestyle wrestler who grew up in Mackenzie and represented Canada at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Late last year, the district finished extensive renovations to the ice arena that included a new concrete ice slab, rink boards, heating and cooling systems, solar panels and a heat exchange system that both cools the ice surface and heats the nearby pool.
That project earned Mackenzie a Community Leadership Award for Environmental Stewardship from the North Central Local Government Association at the organization’s 2025 annual general meeting in May.
The City of Prince George earned two Community Leadership Awards of its own at the AGM, one for environmental stewardship for work using a satellite and artificial intelligence tool to manage wetland assets within the city and another presented to both Prince George and Prince Rupert for economic development for their work on the Northern BC Hydrogen Hub initiative.
Prince George has been selected as the host for the 2026 NCLGA annual general meeting.
While on the concrete slab, director of recreation services Terry Gilmer explained to the delegation that drainage issues caused the reopening of the arena to be delayed into the middle of the hockey season.
After four years of working to get federal grants, approval from Mackenzie council and construction, he said that they stepped onto the ice surface to discover that the quality wasn’t as good as was hoped.
There were gaps where ice didn’t form as quickly and to get through the season they had to avoid turning the heat on to maintain a playable surface. At one point, a power outage caused havoc as they tried to get things back in order.
It turned out that beneath the concrete slab, some of the pipes below didn’t have their headers drilled through, preventing coolant from circulating.
The district is now working with the contractor to cut out a chunk of concrete, open the pipes, drill into the headers, fuse the pipes back together and pour a stronger variety of concrete as a plug that will hopefully maintain the quality and lifespan of the surface.
The pool also had a new deck installed and a water slide will be delivered sometime later this year. Next door, the local library is temporarily closed as new flooring is installed.
The tour concluded with a brief stop at a new bike park across the street from the rec centre that features both dirt and paved elements.
