This young man had a really Bright idea

BY MARTIN C. BARRY

Much as his name might suggest, young Ben Bright of Côte St. Luc is a brainy

11-year-old with a passion for

hockey and a determination to succeed at everything.

When the Hebrew Academy student learned at the start of this winter that Côte St. Luc officials wouldn’t be setting up an outdoor hockey rink in Irving Singerman Park near his Parkview Avenue home as he had requested, he didn’t take no for an answer. “There was a rink, but there were no nets, so we had to use our shoes as nets and it wasn’t fun,” Ben said in an interview with The Chronicle.

So, as almost no one seemed to be using the rink last year for skating, it seemed only reasonable to ask that it be outfitted for informal games of shinny hockey between friends in the neighbourhood.

According to Harold Cammy, Côte St. Luc’s chief of sports and installations, Ben wrote a letter to Mayor Anthony Housefather last November, asking the City to reconsider a decision not to build a hockey rink this winter in the park near Robinson Avenue. “At the time, it had been our decision to construct only a small skating pond,” Cammy said in an e-mail, adding that the rink was initially not going to be supplied with hockey nets.

After Housefather placed the matter in the hands of the recreation department, Cammy and David Taveroff, the department’s director, met with Ben, who was accompanied by his father, Rabbi Alan Bright, who apparently allowed Ben to carry the conversation. “After meeting with this young gentleman, it was obvious by his efforts and determination that we would move

forward and support his request,”

said Cammy. He sees Ben’s efforts as an example of how a youngster was able to put the democratic and citizen input process to good use in order to make a

difference. “We installed a second ice surface at Singerman with nets and Ben has been coming out with his friends on a regular basis,” Cammy added.

Ben, who is already mapping his career with hopes of one day being a medical malpractice lawyer, said that he went

to the meeting prepared to argue his

case, only to find that those in charge

had already decided in his favour. “I

like to argue, I like to fight for justice,”

he said.

According to Ben’s mother, Elizabeth, he acted entirely on his own. “We only found out afterwards that he did all this,”

she said. “He has an idea or a desire and he goes and reaches it.”