To date a total of 122 communities across Canada including Summerlnad have submitted applications for Hockeyville.
The deadline is approaching and Summerland needs more people to register.
Kraft Canada, CBC and the National Hockey League Players Association sponsor this contest. The grand prize is $100,000 worth of upgrades to the community arena and a pre-season NHL game. This year four runners-up will receive $25,000 in upgrades. But the contest is really about creating or recreating community spirit.
The contest is looking for three separate characteristics: originality, community spirit and a display of passion for the sport of hockey.
If the Hockeyville contest is looking for originality: we have it. Two of Summerland’s earliest pioneers played in the first official organized hockey game in Montreal on March 3, 1875. The hockey players were Henry Joseph and Edward Clouston.
Joseph, while a student at McGill University experimented with new sports. He played in the first hockey game and a year earlier played in the first football game in Cambridge between Harvard and McGill Universities. He is the only person to do so. He even experimented with a sport of lacrosse on skates.
Joseph and his brother Horace had orchard land at the entrance to Prairie Valley.
As for Clouston, he became Sir Edward Clouston. He played a prominent role in the formation of professional and amateur hockey. He was the first trustee of both the Stanley Cup and Allan Cup.
His home is one of Summerland’s heritage homes and is located on Victoria Road South just past the old West Summerland train station site.
Following his death, his brother Robert Clouston lived in the home and became an active prominent citizen of Summerland.
Some of the more recent hockey accomplishments include the first site of the Okanagan Hockey School that is now one of the top ranked hockey schools.
Summerland also had Canada’s first all female hockey school in 1991 as well as the first Female Hockey Tournament in Western Canada.
What are needed for the Hockeyville contest are your stories and photographs. This can be done by downloading the website and entering the Missions. There are a total of five Missions. What the contest is looking for is not just submissions, but the number of different people who register on the site.
The greater the number of people; the greater the display of community spirit.