Lumsden, Sask., Hopes to Win Kraft Hockeyville

With April 9th just a few short days away, the town of Lumsden, Saskatchewan is ramping up their social media activity, hoping to reach and encourage as many people as possible to vote for their chance to win $250,000 and an NHL game through this year’s 15th Kraft Hockeyville.

Last year, the rink’s annual fundraiser, the Duck Derby, which has been running for 33 years, was cancelled due to COVID, leaving a large gap in fund raising. This gap spurred Chair of the Lumsden Duck Derby, Jamie Lees and the rest of the fundraising committee to apply for the Hockeyville contest.

“Our rink is run on fundraising, sponsorship and volunteerism alone.  To try to recoup some lost funds and rally our town together virtually as we can’t meet physically, we decided to apply for Kraft Hockeyville. To start off, I had people post stories, pictures, videos and notes on our Kraft Hockeyville site, and we ended up getting around 2,400 posts to our page! This was huge! It really brought people together sharing stories and reminding them that our rink really is the heart of our town.”

The huge effort everyone put in paid off, and on March 20th Lumsden found out they were among the top four towns selected for the final round. Other towns include Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Elsipogtog First Nation, New Brunswick, and Saint Adolphe, Manitoba.

“When we found this out, we quickly formed a little committee of four amazing women (Jaime Stobbs, Amy Fischer Johns, Meredith Schmidt and myself) and, since then, have been trying do our best to spread the word far and wide!

The $250,000 will go towards building our female hockey program by adding additional change rooms to our facility. We are also needing to do some repairs to our roof and aging ice plant,” says Lees.

In the 14 years of the Kraft Hockeyville contest, Saskatchewan has never won, so on April 9th and 10th be sure to visit www.krafthockeyville.ca and click on LUMSDEN to vote! The grand prize winner will be announced during Hockey Night in Canada’s broadcast on April 10th. The three other finalist runner-ups will also receive $25,000 in arena upgrades and $10,000 for new equipment.