The Board of Directors would first like to thank our members for your continued support through these difficult times. Everyone, in one way or another is going through financial hardships as less money comes into our households but bills keep sending it out. This is also the same for Abbotsford Fish and Game Club.
We have seen enormous support from you, our membership, in deciding to keep up with your renewals, even while the Club remains closed under a Public Health Order. Over 77% of our members have paid their memberships on time and less than 3% indicated that they are unable to continue being members at AFGC. We expect many of the remaining members to renew their memberships when this crisis is under control and people find themselves back at work again. As promised, we will give those members a chance to renew before taking on any new members from our waitlist.
The Board of Directors are all anxious to see the range reopen. It’s impossible to know when this might happen. It all, ultimately, falls on Dr. Henry to let us know when we can start. But it’s not quite that simple.
As AFGC, we are both a business – the range, and a sport – the shooting. When we are allowed to open again, it will be because Dr. Henry has allowed us to open either as a business, or as a sport.
The task of reopening sports in BC has been given to ViaSport, the organization that manages sport in BC. It distributes over $16 million in Provincial Government funding. It also is the BC organization that manages the links to the National Teams, Olympic Teams and the National Sports Organizations. It is pretty much at the center of most sports in BC.
ViaSport is looking at a phased approach to reopening sport that limits group size, maintains physical distancing, and minimizes physical contact. Initially, this will focus on practice and skill development, not competition.
In order for a sport to reopen in BC, the PSO, the Provincial Sport Governing Body for a sport, must submit a plan that includes considerations for what types of facilities can reopen, how to clean, how to maintain physical spacing, who can participate, equipment sharing, and hundreds of other details. The plan will then be reviewed by ViaSport and finally approved by Bonnie Henry and the Ministry of Health.
The PSO for shooting is the BC Target Sports Association, and for archery, it’s the BC Archery Association. Both are working together to get our sports back up and running. This process is controlled by the government, all we can do is be ready when the opportunity presents itself. Both shooting and archery are well ahead in having plans developed.
So, what might this look like? It’s hard to say for sure but expect that physical distancing will reduce the number of people who can be on the range at any time. Also expect that booking ahead or showing up and being disappointed with a long waitlist are a potential trade-off. Expect to be able to shoot as a family group, but not any closer that 2 meters from your shooting friends. Expect to bring hand sanitizer to the range with you. You get the picture, it’s very similar to what we’re seeing almost everywhere else. We are going to have to follow these rules, or a set of rules very similar to these, if we want to reopen the ranges.
And, of course, when? It depends. It depends on a lot of things and none of them are under our control.
We will continue looking at our opportunities to open as soon as it is safe to do so, and we can legally re-open. Until then, use laser trainers and dry fire practice to keep up your skills while home.
Sincerely,
Abbotsford Fish and Game Club Board of Directors
I would like to pay for someone’s membership who couldn’t pay because of this crazy virus lockdown I’m sure there is other members who would like to help out somebody! Let me know Thx
Wow! That is extremely generous of you! Please send an email to membership@afgc.ca and I’m sure we can arrange something.
While I support the closing of the range to assess plans, I’m struggling with the characterization that the PHO has closed the range and that Dr Henry will determine when it can open. The order refers to the prohibition against having 50 or more persons gathering. While this can be the case at the range during organized events, it has never been my experience as a drop in user. The PHO has never ordered closed any sport or sport facility. AFGC decided to close as they did not feel that they could immediately meet limiting the 50+ attendees. Once AFGC can limit attendees to 50 (I think relatively easy) and encourage social distancing (which is not actually an “order”) we should be able to return to common sense basic operations. I think it is entirely under AFGC’s control to meet the current PHO. looking forward to trigger time…just not with my AR 🙁
Count me in to sponsor two memberships. Let me know how I can help. I’ll email you.
The membership committee will get in touch with you through email I think! That’s wonderful!
I agree with Dave Schmirler, Sport is not closed and private clubs are not closed. golfing is happening all around us. A measured and cautious approach where plexiglass is installed between each shooting bench and a book your time ahead for the bench or benches you want with 2 hr time slots or a first come first serve wait in your car till it’s your turn option could be implemented within days. The shooting range is a very similar activity in terms of layout to a golf driving range,
I recommend looking at the following link
https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/vancouver-golf-guidelines-covid-19.pdf
I have a sneaking feeling that this government in BC, Anti gun as they are have no real interest in helping our club open up. Got to stay on top of this. Count me in if you need help to lobby
Hi Jean-Paul, those are exactly the ideas we’re looking to implement to get the club open as soon as possible. Although there is one main thing that golf courses have, that AFGC does not… STAFF. They have staff to tell people what do to and where to go, they have staff to clean and sanitize after each player, they have staff to keep too many people from gathering in one area, to let people know when it’s their time and when it’s time to leave. AFGC does not. This is a hurdle we are trying to find a solution for.
I too will pay for a family who finds themselves in difficult times and unable to renew their membership.
Wow, there are some great ideas here about reopening – keep it up!
Cheers.
Personally I never understood why the ranges were shut down for individual shooting. We get closer to people in the grocery store or on a sidewalk. During the week when I normally shoot many times there is nobody at a range I want to use and if there is it’s normally only 2 people. It would have been very easy to add restrictions on those days where there was more people, I have never seen more than 50 people at the range(s) except during events. I certainly don’t think we need any approval to re-open in a restricted way. Ensuring that there is 4 m (2 m is the minimum) between shooting areas and abiding by the physcial distancing we all know about would be more than suffident to reduce any chance to spread COVID-19 as well as everyone already knows to wash their hands, not touch their face. I work in health care on the front lines and I certainly appreciate the efforts of our board to protect us but given our ranges are outside with minimal contact with surfaces i.e. Door handles there is no reason we cannot open immediately with guidlines in place.
The club house and all events should remain cancelled until public community centres are allowed to re-open
My thoughts on this.
On more point, ViaSport typically deals with sports that are contact or where a player(s) can contact each other during play. Shooting is a no-contact sport so I do not see how this applies to us at all. Just becuase shooting is called “sport shooting” It simply does not fall into the same category as traditional sports where contact, sweat, blood, can happen all of which would put player, bystanders and officials at high risk of contracting a virus.
Question about those of us that were hoping to participate in work bees as a way of reducing their membership fees… if the range is closed and there’s no opportunity to participate, how will that work?
Could the savings in operating costs be passed back to the members or perhaps use the savings for a project that there otherwise wasn’t funding for?
We are looking further into how we can open as soon as possible. Social distancing is not really the issue, although we expect that with an opening, there will be a surge in members wanting to shoot all at once, so limiting people on the property would need to be put in place. Without staff members to be able to direct, crowd control, sanitize, that makes things more difficult. The other consideration is touch points, who and how are things going to get sanitized on a regular basis like door handles, benches, target stands, brooms, dustpans, garbage bins, etc. ? Solutions all need to be put in place before we open, not on the fly while the club is operating. That would be irresponsible. Please bear with us while we work through these issues.
Carl, workbee fees are assessed by the volunteer hours from the previous year. The Board will be discussing what to do if there is no opportunity to volunteer this year, but that would affect next year’s renewals, not this current one.
If we need people to help with crowd control and sanitizing, pencil me in. I can sanitize with the best of them.
If we need members to be range officers, crowd control/parking attendants,etc,, please pencil me in. And if I get to shoot at a slow time, bonus. Craig.
Thank you for your volunteer offers. Having people at the club to volunteer will definitely ease some of the challenges we are facing with a re-opening.
I’m available for any sanitizing / cleaning. I have experience cleaning in schools/ commercial areas . I do have contacts for sanitizing products . also i’m very close to the range
IN RESPONSE TO OUR VOLUNTARY CLOSURE
The ranges run as businesses and as sports. When we reopen, it is as one, the other, or both.
ViaSport is coordinating work on how you reopen as a sport. Any of our Nationally Certified coaches, working under their NCCP licensing will likely be bound by these rules. Within the specific sports, we need to have a plan, and get it approved by the PHO. Anyone who opens under that plan needs to follow the rules. If we open outside of these rules, it’s up to us to sort things out ourselves and we are liable for our actions, we are reopening as a business.
“Any business or service that has not been ordered to close and is also not identified on the essential service list may stay open if they can adapt their services and workplace to the orders and recommendations of the PHO.”
There have been Public Health Orders, Notices and Guidance’s from the PHO directly, such as the order prohibiting “the gathering of people in excess of 50 people”. There have also been recommendations from the BC Center for Disease Control, among which are:
Hand Washing
Physical Distancing
Travel restrictions
Cleaning and Disinfecting
For shooting, these “orders and recommendations”, will include everything directly from the PHO, the recommendations from the CDC and local recommendations, including from the Health Authorities.
Also, for sports facilities such as ranges, we expect we will be held to the standards set for the individual sports, as is being developed through ViaSport, even if we are not directly associated with ViaSport, or the Provincial or National Sports Organizations. This is because these PHO APPROVED plans will become the defacto standard in the Province.
Expect there to be rigorous contact tracing in the months to come. We see the Government and the Health Authorities gearing up for it. Any facility that is found to be the cause of an outbreak can reasonably expect to be shut down until some remedial work is done, but this may also be extended to the entire industry, or similar facilities. So, problems at one range could, very likely, affect all ranges in BC.
We doubt there will be a lot of direct enforcement, but if anything goes wrong, there may be “issues”, and we all want to act responsibly. “Flying by the seat of our pants” and everyone making up their own rules, no matter how well intentioned, is neither responsible nor wise.
So, the best policy, and safest, we believe, is to follow the sport specific rules, or at least close enough to them that we can say we were making every reasonable attempt. Let ViaSport and the PSO’s do the heavy lifting in developing the plans, and then follow those rules as best we can apply them.
What ViaSport is doing, really, is giving us an approved path to open. Following the plan should keep us on the good side of things with the Public Health Office and any accusations of negligence.
The Board of Directors is meeting this week to discuss this and everything else in regards to re-opening the club safely.
I think our members are responcable people. We could enact temporary changes to club rules such that only members and their family of their household could attend. We could reduce the number of shooting lanes or install barriers. We could inact rules where you book a 2h slot on 1 shooting lane with 15 min before and after for members to sanitizer for themselves. Members could be asked to maintain 6′, and bring their own hand sanitizer and gloves for door knobs. We could supply mild bleach solution or some other sanitizer for brooms benches tables and such. Members would be required to book a slot ahead, bring only 1 member of their household max as a family membership or guest with fees paid on line. Members could be required to wait in their car until their booking time. Our members already act as their own range officers. We are a group of safety conscious people, why not allow our members to act as their own social distancing monitors, with some modifications to rules, bookings, and cleaning proceedures to be taken by members themselves. We also have access control and cameras already in place. Rules could be enforced where needed by timing use of access cards, and by reviewing camera footage where there is a safety complaint from a member. Dr. Henry is expected to announce loosening social distancing rules on May 11th. I think we could have a plan in place that could work for a responcable group of adult members by then with a little work to our website, and supplying some sanitizing solution for touch points within the ranges. It would still present some challenges but I think opening with members responcable for sanitizing and social distancing is possible for us.
Thanks Jake, those are all things we are going to be discussing at our next meeting.