The Participaction Community Challenge will announce Canada’s “most active community” this week. Hay River hopes the title is heading to the NWT.
The annual challenge asks communities to track hours of physical activity throughout June among people who sign up for qualifying local events.
The winner receives $100,000 toward sports and recreation.
This year, Hay River and Fort Good Hope are finalists alongside 48 other locations nationwide. (Representatives of Fort Good Hope couldn’t be reached for comment prior to publication.)
Hay River’s Courtney Fraser and Jordan Froese coordinated the town’s 2024 Participaction entry. Fraser said it was not difficult to get people on board and 53 different local organizations registered for the challenge, significantly higher than the number last year.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“We had a really high level of community engagement this year,” Fraser told Cabin Radio.
“We signed up all kinds of individuals as they walked through the door. That was really neat, to see how willing people were to sign up to help Hay River out.
“The purpose of the challenge partly was to get people out. We were finding a bunch of events to get people active and to get people enjoying for recreation in the community … People were really interested, really invested and got really excited about it.”
Fraser said the grand prize was also a big motivator for residents to participate. According to her, Hay River was also a national finalist last year while in 2021, it was a winner at territorial level.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Each community that makes the final is invited to make a submission featuring five supporting documents to help Participaction select a winner.
This year, Hay River submitted a video montage showcasing residents taking part in different events.
“A lot of it came down to myself and Jordan being really local about the challenge,” said Fraser.
“We started reaching out to people in April and May – to different community groups, sports groups and businesses. We sent emails and we started visiting different businesses in town to encourage them to sign up for the challenge.”
The town’s senior administrator, Glenn Smith, said the recreation department “went above and beyond,” putting in hours beyond their normal shifts, to get programs out to the community.
“Without them, we wouldn’t be in the running. I have no doubt,” he said.
“We participated in this challenge in prior years and had done quite well, and have been recognized as a leader at the territorial level, but now we’ve set our sights on winning at the national level. Early indications are we have a very good chance of doing that,” he said.
Smith feels proud of the town’s residents for participating in the challenge, which resulted in Hay River being at the top of the Participaction national leaderboard in its first week.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
“For the size of our community, we’ve got very strong community recreation groups. Whether it’s hockey, slo-pitch or minor softball programs, the golf course or ski club, there are a lot of community groups that organize themselves and offer this programming to residents,” he said.
Smith said this is one of “many forms” of recovery for Hay River after the wildfires and flood of recent years.
“We typically think of fixing infrastructure but we want to be able to fix each other, and recreation provides that avenue for healthy living and getting people out in the community by working together for a common challenge,” he said.
“I think this program is very important to our own social recovery as a community.”
