The Eliyahu Wellness Centre is Open!
By The Store Team
It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. The Eliyahu Wellness Centre officially opened its doors on February 16, 2023, and it is something to see.
If you grew up playing hockey or skating at the old North Star Arena — the one that opened in 1971 and served this community for over fifty years — you know how much this means. The North Star was held together by volunteer labour, duct tape, and sheer stubbornness for its last decade. It gave us everything it had. But it was time, and the community knew it.
What happened next is one of the great PEI stories. The "Fill the Jar to Replace the North Star" campaign, combined with Chase the Ace fundraising, raised $1.8 million from 13 communities: North Rustico, Rusticoville, Rustico, New Glasgow, Oyster Bed Bridge, Wheatley River, Hunter River, Cavendish, Hope River, Mayfield, Brackley, Breadalbane, and St. Ann's. That's not corporate sponsorship. That's neighbours buying tickets and dropping money in jars at the grocery store. That's community in the truest sense.
The new facility is a proper wellness centre. Olympic-sized ice surface. Fitness centre. Indoor walking track. Ten dressing rooms — ten! Anyone who ever squeezed a peewee team into the North Star's tiny rooms knows what a luxury that is. It's a building that matches the quality of the programs and the people who use it. North Star Minor Hockey finally has the home it deserves.
We won't pretend the road was smooth. The original cost estimate was around $10 million. The final price tag came in over $22 million. Pandemic-era supply costs hit this project the same way they hit every major build on the Island — lumber, steel, concrete, everything doubled and tripled in price. It was a gut check. But the communities stayed committed, the funding came together, and the building got built.
We're proud to have supported this project from our end. When a community builds something like this, it's the local suppliers who help make it real — materials, hardware, the unglamorous stuff that holds the walls up. We were glad to be part of it.
If you haven't been inside yet, go take a look. Lace up for a public skate. Walk the track. Bring the kids. It belongs to all of us.