The Best Seats
In The House

Many gymnasiums today are designed and constructed to be used as multi-sport and multi-event facilities. While time is blocked off for sports such as badminton, basketball, volleyball and training exercises, these facilities are also used for pep rallies, assemblies and other events.

These facilities have to be able to quickly transform and allow operators to schedule a variety of events and activities in a relatively tight block of time.

Ceiling-suspended basketball nets can pose a problem for some gymnasiums, either blocking sightlines during events or obstructing play for other sports. To remedy this problem, we offer a couple of winch options that aid in raising these basketball systems up and out of the way quickly and safely.

In addition to traditional fitness applications such as training facilities and gymnasiums, a large portion of our custom padding department is dedicated to the production of fully padded rooms for a variety of different uses. While each padded room comes with different application requirements, the majority are used as a safety precaution in hospitals and health facilities or simply for providing relaxation, comfort or to heighten the senses.

As of late, we have been involved in projects aiming to design and build Snoezelen multi-sensory environments for clients around the globe. Here are some of the basics surrounding these popular sensory-focused padded rooms:

What is Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Environment?

This concept was actually designed by a pair of Dutch therapists in the late 1970’s who were working at a local centre for people experiencing intellectual disabilities. These therapists eventually would create an environment for their patients that would excite the senses and prove to be quite beneficial to their early subjects.

The annual Puppets Up! Festival just wrapped up this past weekend in our hometown of Almonte, Ontario. The three-day festival runs each year during the month of August where puppets and performers provide hours of entertainment for families and children of all ages in the town’s historic downtown.

While downtown’s Mill Street was lined with vendors, live music and puppet performances, the main attractions took place in a number of tented theatres and inside some of Almonte’s historical buildings. Complete puppet performances took place at various times throughout the weekend in these designated locations, pleasing spectators from start to finish.

As with your vehicle or any other piece of machinery or equipment, properly scheduled maintenance is a sure-fire way to get the most out of that product’s life cycle. The same holds true for athletic equipment and infrastructure, whether that equipment has mechanical or moving parts or is simply stationary.

Larger-scale projects such as bleacher and grandstand seating are often overlooked, but require a good deal of attention. These large structures are often located outdoors 365 days of the year and while they are built to withstand terrible weather conditions, they too require regular maintenance to ensure your spectators are always safe.

We have compiled a quick checklist that can be used at any time of the year and hopefully on an ongoing basis that will help you and your facility maintenance staff perform routine checks.

The town of North Bay, Ontario was selected by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as the Ontario Regional Office for the construction of emergency landing fields in 1933. This base closed at the end of World War II, but was reopened in 1951, originally as a flying school and then as a fighter base. It was not until 1966 that this station was officially designated a Canadian Forces Base (CFB) and was known as CFB North Bay.

The Air Command was restructured in the early 1990’s and was renamed 22 Wing, as it is known as today. Today, this facility is responsible for providing surveillance, identification, control and warning for the aerospace defence of Canada and North America at the Sector Air Operations Centre.

One of our busiest departments is our padding department. We receive thousands of inquiries, questions and requests for custom padding designs and solutions each year. As one can very well imagine, this portion of our business has expanded well beyond the traditional athletic applications such as gymnasiums and athletic floor mats. Today, we proudly equip a wide variety of organizations and facilities with highly detailed and highly customized padding solutions, where no two projects are ever the same.

Aside from the traditional applications, we design and create custom padded room designs for use in treatment centres and healthcare facilities such as hospitals. We provide many of our commercial and industrial clientele with strategically placed wall, column and frame padding to keep employees safe and also offer a padding line specifically designed for use with veterinary facilities, keeping staff and animals safe during their visits.

As a company, we strive to offer our existing, current and prospective clientele the very best in sports and athletic infrastructure and areconstantly updating, tweaking and expanding our product offering to best serve our growing market. One large area of expertise our team proudly presents our clients with is upgrading outdating equipment in older facilities and operations. Often times, these upgrades arise due to safety issues or concerns, while other times they can simply be the by-product of technological and functional advancements in the design and construction of certain pieces of equipment.

One of our largest areas of upgrades exists within educational facilities. These facilities serve hundreds of participants and a variety of events each year and the athletic locations such as gymnasiums within these facilities require a multi-use approach to their equipment and fixtures.

When it comes to seating for use in educational facilities, buyers are traditionally looking for a few basic features to serve the demanding needs of their institution. Given the high level of traffic and constant use of lecture halls, these facilities require a chair that is durable, long lasting and relatively low maintenance.

We carefully select a number of fixed seating options to serve a wide range of facilities and organizations around the world and our sales team is highly knowledgeable and capable of finding the perfect fit. Here we will highlight a couple of our most popular fixed seating chairs for use in lecture halls and in other locations found in educational facilities. These products provide customers with an aesthetically pleasing seating solution that is built to withstand high-traffic areas and is easily cleaned and maintained, reducing scheduled maintenance costs.

Removing the barriers experienced by children with physical and mental disabilities was the goal when the Miracle League first started in April of 2000 in the state of Georgia. The idea behind this incredible organization has spread like wild fire and now consists of over 240 Miracle League Organizations serving over 200 000 children and adults who might not otherwise have the opportunity to play the game of baseball.

The Miracle League brings a unique angle to the traditional game of baseball that allows participants to blossom, not only as players, but as individuals. The proven ‘buddy’ system the league employs pairs each disabled player with an able-bodied player and fosters new friendships, skills and tremendous confidence in all who participate.

In the summer of 2012, a local Ottawa family approached both the Champions for Ottawa Baseball and the Orleans Rotary Club with expressed interest in bringing a Miracle League to Ottawa to support their son Bryce’s love of baseball. Bryce, who was born with cerebral palsy, wanted dearly to partake in a baseball league and his parents, Rolly and Michelle Desrochers, set out to make his dream a reality.