The Best Seats
In The House

Anchoring the eastern border of the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe, lays Oshawa; a town deeply rooted in the automotive industry and nestled along the shores of Lake Ontario.  A town once recognized as Canada’s automotive hub, today is shaping itself as more of an education and health sciences hub, serving as the home of three post-secondary educational institutions as well as Lakeridge Health and Education Research Network; the largest, multi-specialty medical group practice in the country.

One of our more recent projects landed us in the city-operated Legends Centre, located just north of the city’s centre.  This facility serves as a central location for the city’s sports and leisure activities and is the hub of Oshawa’s activeOshawa programming.  The facility includes a 4-pad arena, a leisure pool complete with a lazy river and waterslide, a fitness centre, an indoor track, and an outdoor playground with accompanying splash pad.

With a new school year just around the corner, athletic directors, planners and maintenance staff are busy preparing for the upcoming term.  With a new influx of students, programming and amenities, now is the perfect time to quickly inspect your athletic equipment.

While in most cases, a professional inspection is always your best bet, they are not always entirely necessary, especially if your facility is diligent about year-round maintenance.  If however, you are unsure as to the condition of any piece of equipment, we urge you to schedule an inspection with a certified professional.

Here are few quick checks you and your staff can make in a number of different areas to ensure your athletic equipment such as basketball systems, bleachers and other sport-oriented products are ready to roll for the 2016-2017 season.

We all love the roar of the crowd while taking in a football game, or the rush we get while watching players blaze down a basketball court.  The sensations that sports illicit in both spectators and participants can sometimes make us forget about everything that went into the design and production of the courts, bleachers and other athletic products used on a daily basis.

Before these products hit the floor of any gymnasium or grace the sidelines of any football field or soccer pitch, they oftentimes have gone through years of research and development.  While technological and design elements are forever changing, making our lives easier, safety is still the top priority for equipment and infrastructure manufacturers like us and the customers we serve.

One of our most popular product lines is that of our gym divider curtains.  Allowing facilities to quickly and easily divide large spaces such as gymnasiums gives these facilities another level of versatility and can increase their programming capacity.

While some models are hand-drawn, the majority of installations are completely motorized which come with high safety ratings, low operating costs and virtually no maintenance when serviced on an annual basis. 

Perhaps one of the most aesthetically-pleasing dividers on the market is our top roll gym divider curtain (model 4040).  For facilities with height clearance issues, this low-profile design operates seamlessly without the use of belts, cables or exposed wires.  This curtain is supported securely from the roof structure by either attaching the product to the underside of the roof truss or by utilizing 3 1/2” O.D. horizontal and 2 3/8” O.D. vertical structural tubing.

With the growing number of multi-use facilities in schools, community centres, colleges and other organizations, owners and operators are always looking for ways to maximize their available space.

Many gymnasiums today are used for a variety of athletic activities such as volleyball, basketball, gymnastics and badminton as well as other activities such as assemblies, pep rallies and theatrical performances. In light of the growing need to do more with an allotted space, manufacturers and suppliers of athletic equipment and infrastructure are required to constantly innovate and create customized products to meet the need of the fast-paced athletic industry.

Here are five products that do a fantastic job of adding a great deal of versatility to any gymnasium.

With the advancements in technology and architectural design over the last few decades, today we are witnessing the construction of some truly amazing sports facilities and structures. What were once traditionally designed in square or rectangle-type shapes, gymnasiums, practice facilities and other athletic buildings are taking on a variety of shapes and sizes.

With these advancements come additional products tailor-made to properly address the various structures currently in use and those that will come in the future. While the majority of our gym divider curtains satisfy the needs of a bulk of the facilities in operation today, we do carry a specialized line of divider curtains that can be completely customized to fit unique ceiling contours.

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.

As with any equipment or technology, after any given number of years of repeated use it can either become worn out, out of date, obsolete or downright unsafe. Gym dividers and partitions that are out of date can quickly become an area of concern for facility managers and operators, and maintenance or replacement should be considered as your divider or partition gets older.

This was true of our latest project we completed for Holy Trinity High School in the Ottawa Catholic School Board. We were commissioned to remove and dispose of their existing folding partition and supply and install a new state-of-the-art gym divider curtain for the local high school.

Our team quickly and safely removed the old partition and began preparing the space for the new divider curtain to be installed. Once the removal was completed, we were to supply and install our highly-popular top roll gym divider curtain, with a touch of customization.

As facility managers, operators and business owners, we all know the importance of a strong brand image to represent your company, sports team or both. Your logo and associated colour scheme is a symbol that provides instant and powerful brand recognition and in some cases portrays organizational values and goals without saying a word.

As more and more facilities and athletic institutions grow their user and fan bases, the need for unique customization of their athletic equipment becomes very important. Logo screening was perhaps at one point thought of as a luxury, but is now becoming more a necessity for a large portion of our clientele.

It began when organizations started requesting team colour-coded removable and permanent wall padding for their gymnasiums, along with customized colour schemes and lettering for their telescopic bleachers and fixed seating in lecture halls and auditoriums.