Hockeyville committee speaks out

As Co-Chairs of West Kelowna’s Hockeyville committee, we want to congratulate the town of Stirling-Rawdon, on behalf of all of us, for their Hockeyville victory.

We also want to extend our deepest gratitude to the entire community of West Kelowna for demonstrating outstanding community spirit throughout our Hockeyville campaign and exceptional integrity last Saturday, when confronted prematurely with the competition’s results.

As you can imagine, our committee was devastated when it learned, shortly after 8am last Saturday, that a media release had circulated revealing the Hockeyville winner twelve hours earlier than planned.

At first,  when approached by us, CBC and Kraft denied the story, calling it ‘bogus’. We had no reason to mistrust them and were encouraged to echo that message through the media, which we did.

By mid-morning however, when it became obvious the story was in true, Kraft and CBC abandoned us, refusing to communicate with us further, despite our repeated appeals and the onslaught of media we were being forced to confront alone.

We were shocked and disappointed both companies, the primary benefactors of Hockeyville, chose to turn their backs on us during our most challenging hours simply to protect ‘good TV’ and the ‘drama’ of the evening’s televised reveal. After all the effort we had invested promoting their brands, we had expected more consideration and good faith in return.

Though our committee had been robbed of the most important day of celebration, one for which we had worked so hard, left to confront a barrage of questions from the media and community members, we chose to withhold what we knew, in order to preserve as much of the celebration for others as possible.

We took the high road and so too did the entire community, most of whom had already been made aware of the result before venturing to Royal LePage Place in the pouring rain that evening.

Nonetheless, they came, by the hundreds, filling the arena, cheering, waving signs and putting on brave faces for the cameras.

Through Hockeyville, our community has demonstrated the pinnacle of spirit, passion and integrity.

It is disappointing to us all that neither Kraft nor the CBC chose to follow suit.

We should mention, that after discussions with the CEO of the national newswire service, which inadvertently broke the story prematurely on Saturday, the newswire company has agreed to furnish Westside Minor Hockey with 50 new sets of hockey equipment for our kids to help compensate for the error.

We have still yet to hear from Kraft and CBC.

While we are disappointed with the way in which Hockeyville’s final day unfolded, we are nonetheless proud of our journey and thrilled to have had the opportunity to represent and promote our community on a national stage.

It has been an amazing ride that has further united West Kelowna and helped pour a little more of the foundation for our community.

We thank The District of West Kelowna, the Westbank First Nation, Westside Minor Hockey, the Westside Warriors and all the local businesses, dignitaries, media and community members who embraced our efforts and gave of themselves so selflessly throughout this campaign.

We may not have won a trophy or the additional $75,000 in upgrades and we didn’t win the right to host an NHL exhibition game in West Kelowna.

But, in our view, we won so much more.

Adam Less & Andrew Deans
Co-Chairs – West Kelowna Hockeyville