The Business Improvement Association (BIA) of Tsawwassen has launched a new community chess/checkers board located at the Tsawwassen Town Centre Mall's Rotary Square (by Blenz Coffee).
The board is available for public use every day of the week from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"We are so excited to have completed this fantastic community building project," said Ana Arciniega, BIA executive director. "We had this idea for a while but it was earlier this year that all the stars aligned and all the pieces fell into place - almost literally!"
The stars were in the form of people in this community who partnered with the BIA to make this possible. The key partner would be the group in charge of creating the custom sized pieces.
"Mr. Kroeker, from the Applied Skills program at South Delta Secondary School had a wonderful relationship with Frances Henry, my assistant. She had been a brilliant student a few years earlier in that program," Arciniega said. "When Frances proposed the plan to both him and Mr. Kirkwood they accepted and gladly provided advice to make this project a reality. They got the Grade 8 and 9 students involved in the process and the result are these wonderful discs made of hardwood."
The discs allow easy storage and the game of chess can double up as checkers.
When considering the design, the idea was to incorporate something local to the pieces.
"We thought about the birds in the area and how some of them would be perfect to represent the traditional chess pieces. So we chose the eagle as king, the graceful heron as queen, the woodpecker as bishop, the mallard as knight, the owl as rook and the beautiful chickadees as pawns."
Katharine Henry designed the birds and added the profile of the pieces to make them really obvious.
Another important aspect was to get the right chess mat to fit the size of the chess pieces. After much research and consultation, South Side Flooring came on board to create a custom made chess mat that would not cause a tripping hazard and that it would be weather resistant.
"James Latheron, owner of South Side Flooring offered to only charge for the materials and he donated all the labour - which was quite a lot," added Arciniega.
Other considerations were where to store the pieces and which area to place the game so it would be easy to access, have benches around, and have a business overlooking to ensure that the pieces were not stolen.
To view some pictures of the project, you can check the shoptsawwassen.com.
