The City of Sarnia has extended its COVID-19 emergency order restricting access to city facilities and recreational amenities.
Parks and Recreation Director Rob Harwood said sports fields, organized programming, picnic rentals and other amenities will remain closed until July 3.
He said baseball and soccer organizations are impacted.
"Some of those leagues have actually already cancelled their seasons anyway," said Harwood. "We've been in collaboration with a great number of communities across all of southwestern Ontario and this is a pretty common trend. So, it's not news that anyone is going to be, probably, surprised by because it's happening everywhere else."
Harwood said it also means that Sarnia's renowned Canada Day celebrations are cancelled this year.
"We're very sorry that has to happen because we're very proud of the efforts that our department puts into Canada Day and certainly our local community does such an incredible job of celebrating Canada Day. But, at this time, there's just not the ability to do it safely."
He said they're planning a virtual celebration.
"Our department is actually working with 60 other municipalities that are networking. They're a municipal event planning group and most other communities, if not all, will be doing virtual celebrations and the federal government has now said it will be doing some sort of virtual celebration as well. So, we'll be linking with them and have put our name into the hat to participate."
Harwood said the timing for reopening city facilities and activities will be reevaluated in the second week of June to align with any social distancing or public gathering announcement by the provincial government.
"We'll be reaching out to all of our customers, but certainly anyone can call city hall or email parksandrecreation@sarnia.ca and we'll certainly deal with everybody and try and get everybody sorted out."