By David F. Rooney
Businesses should be riding the Hockeyville bandwagon — not just because it is the community-minded thing to do, but because it’s smart business to promote a project that could propel the city into the national limelight, says Revelstoke Hockeyville Chairman Gary McLaughlin.
“We have a very, very good shot at winning,” he told local business owners gathered at the Powder Springs Motor Inn for a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
“We are third in Canada right now. But we still have a long way to go.”
With 60 days to go, people who would like to see Revelstoke win the national Kraft Hockeyville 2010 contest have to sacrifice 10 or 15 minutes of their time and post a story and a photograph about their relationship with hockey, hockey culture and/or The Forum. At stake are some pretty nifty rewards: $100,000 for upgrading The Forum, an NHL exhibition game at The Forum, a nationally-televised CBC documentary about the community and its people and big-time bragging rights.
But people have to post their stories in order for Revelstoke to move up to the next level.
McLaughlin noted that when Terrace won in 2009 it had accumulated more than 720 stories from residents, former residents and people who just plain loved the northern BC town. Revelstoke may be in third place nationally and in first place in BC but it still has only 31 stories and 45 photos. Obviously we need many, many more stories.
“The stories don’t have to be long and you don’t have to play hockey to write the kind of story we need,” he said. “It has to be a personal story that says something about your relationship to hockey or The Forum.”
(To find out more about what kind of story you can write please go to www.revelstokecurrent.com/2009/11/17/how-to-write-the-perfect-well-how-about-a-great-hockeyville-story/ or go read the stories that your friends and neighbours have already sent in. You can read them at www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/hockeyville/community/150/en/ and if that doesn’t give you ideas I don’t know what will!)
And don’t forget a photo, while they may now be permitting people to post stories without accompanying photos last week it was impossible to upload a story without one.
“Now we have to bang the drum,” McLaughlin said.
The Revelstoke Hockeyville 2010 Committee will be holding a story workshop on Saturday Nov. 28 from 10 am until 2 pm at the Community Centre to assist people who don’t have access to the Internet or are otherwise unable to file a story.
You can also visit the Committee’s Facebook page by clicking the banner across the top of the sports page in the online Revelstoke Current.
