SUMMERSIDE – P.E.I.’s two cities are teaming up in hopes of attracting a major sporting event to Canada’s smallest province.
Charlottetown and Summerside have submitted a joint bid to Hockey Canada to host the 2020 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. The World Under 17 Hockey Challenge is an international event, sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).
This eight team tournament includes three Team Canada teams that allows for more than 60 of the country’s top NHL prospects to show off their skills. The event takes place annually in early November. In fact, the 2018 tournament, which is being hosted in Saint John and Quispamsis, N.B., begins this weekend.
In addition to teams, officials and Hockey Canada sponsors and representatives, the event also attracts many fans and scouts from around the world. The event has never been hosted on P.E.I. However, in 1995, when Moncton was the host city, the Finland team was based out of Summerside and some tournament round-robin games were played at Cahill Stadium.
International event
“This U17 tournament is an international event that has potential to generate significant economic benefits for our province,” said Chris Palmer, minister of economic development and tourism. “The fact that our two neighboring cities are working collaboratively to support our tourism sector is really icing on the cake.”
This is not the first time Summerside and Charlottetown have worked together. In 2016, the two cities formed a partnership that developed strategic priorities to increase the impact of sport tourism, strengthen both cities as sport tourism destinations and leverage the hosting reputations and capacities of each municipality. One of the goals of the partnership is to jointly bid on high impact signature sport tourism events that the cities don’t have the infrastructure or funding capacity to bid on individually.
In 2017, the partnership showed early success when both Charlottetown and Summerside were jointly awarded the 2019 national ringette championships.
Although the under-17 bid has not yet been awarded, both cities are hopeful that the announcement will be in their favour, especially with the support from the Province of P.E.I. and the Department of Economic Development and Tourism.
