Residents cheered when West Nipissing was announced as the recipient of a $149,000 grant from the Jays Care Foundation to revitalize the Goulard Park baseball field. The Foundation issued the funds through its Field of Dreams Grant, allocated to 15 municipalities across Canada to complete baseball infrastructure projects. 
West Nipissing Council members were all smiles after it was announced the town will receive a $149,000 Field of Dreams grant to revitalize the Goulard Park baseball field. Shown are Roch St-Louis, Georges Pharand, Rolly Larabie, Mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon, Kris Rivard and Fern Pellerin.
West Nipissing wins Field of Dreams grant to renovate baseball field
Christian Gammon-Roy
Tribune
Roughly 40 community members donned their Toronto Blue Jays colours to attend the WN Sports Hall of Fame room in the Sturgeon Falls Complex on Sunday, May 4, in anticipation of an announcement that will change Goulard Park. Elected officials and municipal staff, local baseball enthusiasts and other community members were there for a community watch-party as the 2025 recipients of the Jays Care Foundation Field of Dreams grant were announced live on television. The foundation, in partnership with TD, committed $1.5 million in community infrastructure investments for baseball fields, distributed between 15 communities across Canada. Attendees of the local watch-party were brimming with excitement when West Nipissing flashed across the screen, confirming that the community had been selected for the funding.
The Jays Care Foundation will be allocating $149,000 for West Nipissing’s field modernization projects. “I saw that Blind River and Pembroke got money last year, so that was my pitch to council; clearly they support non-GTA places, so let’s give it a shot,” recounts councillor Kris Rivard, who brought the Field of Dreams grant to the attention of municipal council back in October. Council voted unanimously to prepare an application, and Rivard mentions that staff got to work right away putting together a comprehensive application package.
As explained by Stephan Poulin, Director of Economic Development and Community Services, getting that resolution from council was just the first step of many, as administration did a lot of work behind the scenes. “From there, we look through the application and look for all the required information, and then we fill it out. We also provided letters of support we received from certain community organisations. Then, it’s just determining the scope of the work to be done so that the field is useable for years to come. Once we have the scope, we determine a budget estimate, a costing,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the Blue Jays Care Foundation, or the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, or Trillium, when we submit funding applications, you must do all of the groundwork in advance, and you must determine the costs attached to the project as closely as possible,” he adds.
All that work was finally rewarded during Sunday’s announcement, and both councillor Rivard and mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon made it a point to thank the municipal staff, with the latter insisting that this would “never come to fruition without staff putting forward the great plan and the great application.” The funding is seen as a kick-start for a long-standing project, as modernizing Goulard Park has been at the planning phase since before the previous council’s term.
During her speech, the mayor also got into some of the details of the project, and what it would mean not only for the baseball field, but also for the park as a whole. “With this funding, we plan to revitalize field 1. It will have brand-new dugouts, safer fencing, new bleachers, sturdy backstop, and field surface improvements. In the coming weeks and over the next couple of months, council will have some additional discussions about what other changes we could make within Goulard Park, or what additional funding we can provide to try and stretch this project as far as we can within our budget limitations,” she announced. “Beyond sports, the park serves as a hub for our community for events, social gatherings, recreational uses, and we really hope that this is the first step in creating a more modern, inclusive space for residents.”
She also took a moment to bring attention to Paul Goulard, who was present, and remind attendees of the generosity of his late father Roméo Goulard who had financed the original development of the park.
While the $149,000 grant is significant, the mayor pointed out that there are certainly more costs that the municipality will have to take on. However, some of those costs have been accounted for already, councillor Rivard explains. “At budget time, we were still waiting for an answer on this, we allocated almost $300,000 to the project in case we got this so that we were ready to go,” he says.
