The Town of Crossfield hopes to score a huge goal for the community in the Kraft Hockeyville contest.
With the contest down to the final four, Crossfield is the lone western Canadian municipality left in the running.
According to Mayor Kim Harris, it has really rallied their community together. She says “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this in my term. We have our community groups, our residents, you know, other people from outside of the community rallying with us. It has just been amazing. Yeah, all of the likes and posts are pretty amazing. It is just unrealistic. I can’t believe we that are here and I think our residents are with us.”
She adds, up for grabs is $250,000 for upgrades to their Pete Knight Memorial Arena and the chance to host a National Hockey League pre-season game. Mayor Harris says “that $250,000 will go towards making our rink more accessible for people who are in wheel chairs, and that is really important to us and our community. The second thing that we hope to do is to be able to serve hot food in our concession. Right now we don’t have the ability to do that and we don’t have restaurants that are open later or earlier in the morning. It would be nice for when the families come visit us, and play hockey and skate in our rink that they have access to good, hot food.”
Voting starts at 7am mountain time on Friday, April 4th. So Mayor Harris says that kicks off a total of 32 hours where community members can vote as many times as possible online from your email address via the Kraft Hockeyville website. She adds, Crossfield will be holding rallies on Friday at 7am and on Saturday, April 5th at 3pm. The grand prize winner will be announced during Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday.
Crossfield is competing against Honeywood, Ontario, Saint-Boniface, Quebec, and Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. The three communities that don’t win will still receive $25,000 for arena upgrades, plus all four finalists will get $10,000 in brand new hockey equipment to help more children play the game.
The Kraft Hockeyville program was launched 19 years ago and more than $5.1 million has been awarded to 101 communities since then. Elliot Lake, Ontario was last year’s winner.
Listen to 104.5 The GOAT’s Community Hotline conversation with Mayor Kim Harris.
