Capital Daily for Friday, September 18

The Oak Bay Rec Centre was evacuated and closed Thursday morning after an ammonia release from equipment at the 1975 Bee Street facility.

The district said the ammonia was captured and contained by a backup system and never reached the building, the surrounding area, or the environment. Staff and patrons were cleared out around 9:30 a.m. anyway, and there's no timeline yet for reopening.

Ammonia is standard in the refrigeration units that freeze water for ice rinks, which makes a rec centre a common place to find it. The district says there's no safety risk to the public at this time.

The closure lands a little over a week after Oak Bay said its two waterslides would stay shut indefinitely, pending detailed inspections. For now, anyone hoping to swim or work out in Oak Bay needs another plan.

Sidney Island's beaches, day-use areas, and dock go off-limits to the public from Oct. 15 to Feb. 14, 2027. Parks Canada calls it a safety closure to make room for First Nations hunting. Mooring buoys stay open, but step onto the park's land during those months and it counts as trespassing.

The closure is the quiet next chapter of a project that got loud. Parks Canada's $12-million deer cull started in 2023, aiming to wipe out the invasive fallow deer and bring back the Coastal Douglas-fir forest. It ended abruptly in 2024 after deer were found dead in netted fencing installed during mating season, when antler entanglement was a known risk. Eighty-four deer were killed over 11 days, 18 of them native black-tail.

In 2025 Parks Canada stepped back and asked the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council to take over. The Council called on its members to hunt, hoping to restore the medicines and plants the deer had chewed through. On the island the Nations call SḰŦÁMEN, a spring 2025 trial of traditional hunting methods wrapped this past March.

The park makes up about 20% of Sidney Island. The rest is private. The deer, of course, don't check property lines.