And that’s Canadian dollars… real money! (Oh, cut me some slack—you American readers have been making fun of our currency for years!) :)
Anyway, CBC and Kraft’s Hockeyville voting booth will be closing in about 3 days, narrowing down the Top-10 to the Top-5. And ultimately, the winner is going to do very well:
Winning this title includes, hosting an NHL® Pre-Season Game in their community arena as well as a CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcast plus $100,000 in arena upgrades from Kraft. Your votes will decide who will be crowned Kraft Hockeyville 2008! The other 4 lucky finalists will also win $20,000 in arena upgrades from Kraft plus host a CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcast from their community.
I have no attachment to any of the Top-10 communities myself, but Kukla told me his brother-in-law, Jack, is pushing for his own hometown of Kingsville, ON. So perhaps that will persuade some of you that otherwise have no stake in this?
But personally, I’m sort of enamored by one of the other towns in the mix: a place called “Winnipegosis.”
I figure that any hockey fans who’ve ever worn the letters w-i-n-n-i-p-e-g (etc) on their favorite jerseys have suffered enough. So they’re getting my vote. And who knows—maybe $100,000 in upgrades to any old random arena in Manitoba will get the NHL back into the neighborhood. (The Winnipegosis Jets, here we come…)
On a more serious note, I did check out a number of the videos associated with the Hockeyville project and they’re a nice (though mushy) reminder of the importance of hockey to small communities across Canada.
For a few years as a kid, I also lived in a tiny town like Winnipegosis… and, geez, if our hockey arena had burned to the ground—as theirs did—we probably would’ve lost our minds.
(Or become NBA fans or something. So, VOTE!)
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