Community
Hay River Pond Hockey accepting applications for annual event
Applications will be accepted until the week of the event, and participants can sign up as teams of five
Hay River is once again getting ready to hold a beloved event.
First beginning back in 2008, Hay River’s Polar Pond Hockey event sees the community come together to enjoy casual games with their friends and neighbors, and while it may be a recent tradition, it has quickly become one of the community’s favourites.
“Polar Pond Hockey is all for fun. There’s no prizes other than bragging rights.” Siad Terry Rowe, a Committee member for the event.
“It’s been in the middle of March every year. We build eight to ten rinks right on the Hay River along the Fisherman’s Wharf, and we just play a bunch of hockey! There’s no real prizes, but there’s a big dance on the Friday night, and a lot of food vendors and different things like that.”
Rowe explained that they try to add new attractions to the event every year, and even compared this year’s plans to the very beginning.
“The very first one was a lot smaller. We used to have a tent right on the ice, and we hosted that for the first ten years. Since then, we’ve been able to work with the town to build a new Fisherman’s Wharf pavilion, which is what we’re using now. Then we get it all heated up for March and then we enclose it with some walls. It’s been going pretty hard since about 2008.”
The event regularly sees upwards of 25 local teams taking part, around 10 teams that come from other parts of the Territory, and even a few that come from B.C. and Alberta.
The NWT’s history with hockey stretches even farther back than 2008, however! While there are claims made from other parts of the country as to which region was truly the first to host a game of hockey, one of the earliest accounts comes from right here in the NWT!
Recorded in 1825, an explorer by the name of John Franklin was making his second expedition across the North, on his way to the Arctic Ocean. It eventually became too cold for his company to continue, so they elected to stay in what would eventually become the community of Délı̨nę. While there, and staying at his newly constructed fort, Franklin wrote a letter, in which he recounted “the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning’s sport.”
This letter is one of North America’s earliest written accounts of the sport being played, and is even backed up by Dene oral storytelling, which recounts games being played on the ice where people would “fly around.”
While the event in Hay River may not be directly related to the tale, it does continue a long history of winter recreating in the NWT.
Those who wish to take part in Polar Pond Hockey can sign up a team of five on their website, with a registration fee of $300.
