A retired Bayfield couple told Goderich Mayor Deb Shewfelt last week they planned to sell their home and move to London. Then they visited the eye-popping new Maitland Recreation Centre and changed their minds -- they were going to move to Goderich instead.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anything like this place anywhere in rural Ontario: indoor pool with full wheelchair accessibility, NHL-sized ice rink with a walking track elevated above the ice surface, fitness centre, gymnasium, meeting rooms . . .

There's 78,000 square feet of splashing, skating, power-walking and power lifting.

For Shewfelt and a host of others, this month's long-awaited opening of the $19-million centre was an impossible dream made real.

It had been three decades since residents first raised the idea, but the timing was never right. Someone always balked.

Then, a decade ago, after council commissioned a study, things started to move. Council became committed. Volunteer planners grew to number about 150. Goderich residents and those from neighbouring Central Huron and Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh added ideas and money.

Farmers donated. Little kids, family businesses and big corporations, too. Some people left money in their wills.

They all ultimately pitched in $4.5 million; the feds and province, $1.7 million apiece; and the town is paying off the rest in seven years by drawing annually from a fund council built a few years ago.

"To raise that kind of money in a rural Southwestern Ontario community, you really know you have public momentum behind you," says Coun. John Grace, a driving force behind the project.

Goderich has contracted the Sarnia YMCA to operate the centre and all the town's recreational programs, an unusual step in itself.

General manager Kathi Lomas McGee expected to open the fitness area with 400 members, but almost triple that number have signed up.

But it's not just the new-car smell of the place, the operating structure or the donations that make this thing unique.

It's the commitment.

Goderich, Ashfield- Colborne-Wawanosh and Central Huron together have a population of only 15,000.

And, yet, they've somehow cajoled, compromised and co-operated themselves into building a wow-inspiring rec centre that will be the envy of places 10 times that size.

I can think of more than a few municipalities that balk at spending spare change to fix a pool or irrigate a soccer pitch.

But Goderich and its neighbours stretched tall.

There wasn't a moment Grace believed it might falter.

Shewfelt, who has been around the political block more often than his twice-weekly stroll around the elevated track, wasn't always so sure. But council was unwavering, he said, and Grace "is sort of a magic man who gets things done."

Shewfelt also credits the times for making it happen. Non-smoking bylaws, healthy eating and active lifestyles are all part of the package now.

You can spend loads of money building hospitals, he says (and, incidentally, Goderich also is building a large medical clinic), or you can create a healthy place to keep people out of hospitals.

Town officials hope this centre will lure new families and businesses to the area.

But it also serves current residents in a way they deserve.

Says Lomas McGee, "Why shouldn't our rural communities have the same facilities and the same opportunities that the cities do?"

Adds Grace, "You'd have to go to London" to find anything like this.

Really? Where?

Some believe larger communities naturally must have bigger pocketbooks and broader vision.

Goderich and its neighbours prove that assumption wrong.