TYNE VALLEY, P.E.I. — It's shaping up as a big weekend for Tyne Valley's Rally for the Valley campaign to get a new sports arena.
With the annual Winter Carnival in full swing, the event schedules intersect with some major activities.
Central on a lot of people’s minds for the past month has been the community’s bid to become Kraft Hockeyville 2020. Their campaign has caught the attention of residents from all over the Maritimes who have been throwing their support behind Tyne Valley after learning the community lost its arena in a devastating fire on Dec. 29.
Both the carnival and its annual snow sculpture competition have adopted Kraft Hockeyville as their theme this year.
Ashley Dawson is co-ordinating the snow sculpture competition. She is encouraged by the creative displays that have popped up in area residents’ front yards, from a slice of toast garnished with contents of a giant-sized Kraft peanut butter jar to a slice of pizza next to a big box of Kraft pizza mix.
The Hardy family, famous for its snow sculpture entries and Oyster Festival parade floats, has entered a 'Kraft Hardyville' design, a re-creation of a phoenix, a mythical bird, to represent the sports centre rising from the ashes.
Meanwhile, Dawson helped construct the Maynard family’s entry, a hockey jersey to represent the one in the Kent Maynard Memorial display case that was lost in the arena fire. She said the sculpture took several people more than two hours to complete.
So far Dawson has viewed photos of 18 sculptures and she’s confident many more will be submitted before the photos are judged. The photos are vital, as the sun has already started to fade the colour from some creations.
“It blows my mind,” Dawson said of how the community has rallied from sadness in the wake of the arena fire to the enthusiasm it displays in mounting the Hockeyville and Rally for the Valley campaigns.
“We live in a very special community, for sure.”
Winners of the snow sculpture competition will be announced during Sunday’s NHL Legends game at Summerside’s Credit Union Place. The game is a fundraiser for the Tyne Valley rink campaign.
Tyne Valley Mayor Jeff Noye is serving as project chairman for the Tyne Valley rink rebuilding committee. He is optimistic the legends game, at 4 p.m. Sunday, has the potential of bringing in anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 for the rink campaign.
He’s also keeping his fingers crossed that by the time nominations for Kraft Hockeyville close on Sunday night, the community will have enough nominations to win the nod of the judges.
Only four arenas from across Canada will be picked to go to the final round of the competition for a chance at winning $250,000 and the 2020 Kraft Hockeyville title.
Not lost on Noye is the fact that the nominations only account for 20 percent of the overall score. It’s the story that will carry communities forward, said Noye, and he thinks Tyne Valley’s story is a captivating one.
“Obviously, hockey is a big part of here, but it’s more your community and how special our community is. That’s kind of our big story,” he said. “Just the buy-in to everything: how much we’ve pulled together and how we continue to do that, I think, is the biggest part of our story.”
