Nearly seven years ago, in February 2020, I brought a proposal to the City of Cornwall to properly honour Bob Turner, our former Recreation Director whose name has been carried by a local arena for decades. A man whose legacy speaks for itself . Seven years later, that proposal still hasn’t moved forward, and it’s time to ask why.
Bob Turner deserves better than to become a footnote in someone else’s legacy. He had a whole arena named after him, standing on its own, under his name and his story alone. When Mayor Justin Towndale suggested in a CBC interview that the tribute could instead be located at the Legion Baseball Park, where a field is named after my grandfather, it missed the point entirely. A shared site under another family’s name isn’t a proper tribute to Bob Turner. It’s an afterthought. The mayor called it a better location “in his own personal opinion,” but that opinion has produced nothing. No progress, no timeline, no groundbreaking. Just a stalled idea sitting exactly where it was left.
With the Benson Centre’s naming rights sponsorship now expired, https://www.sportspro.com/news/infrastructure/canadian_sports_complex_acquires_naming_rights/ the city has a real opportunity here. Cornwall should either commit fully to renaming the Benson Centre in Bob Turner’s honour, or return to the original proposal that was agreed upon before the mayor changed direction. Either path is better than more years of stagnation.
This isn’t an isolated pattern. In 2023, a member of the city’s administration emailed me to confirm that Ryan Gosling Day was going to happen. We gave two months’ notice ahead of the proposed date, in good faith (the city’s website indicated we only needed to provide 3 weeks’ notice for a proclamation). Instead of moving forward, city council used that time to debate how they needed to be involved, what they should get out of it, and to question our motives. No apology followed on the misinformation they shared, including that we only gave 2 weeks’ notice. No future date was ever offered.
Our community shouldn’t expect anything in return from Mr. Gosling for a day in his honour. Whatever he has achieved, his time growing up here helped shape who he became. Recognizing that shouldn’t come with strings attached.
Cornwall goes to the polls on October 26, 2026. Whoever becomes the next mayor and council will inherit both of these unfinished promises, and they’ll have a choice: keep repeating the same pattern, or actually follow through. A good first test of any new administration is simple. Commit to Bob Turner’s tribute, in full, on its own terms. Give Ryan Gosling Day the date it was promised, without turning it into a fight over credit. Cornwall has never lacked good ideas. What it lacks is the collaborative spirit to complete them.
Kelly Bergeron
Cornwall
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