Council set to defend championship on home turf during winter games

Page 11

The City of Prince Albert has been chosen as the site of the 1997 Saskatchewan Indian Winter Games. Approximately 1,500 athletes from 72 First Nations will be hosted by the city from April 1 to 4.

"We're actively pursuing these types of activities," said Blair Hoffman of the Prince Albert Parks and Recreation Department.

The city has a policy of providing recreation facilities without rental charges to these types of games, such as Saskatchewan Indian Winter Games and the Special Olympics, he continued.

The facilities involved are the Kinsmen, Steuart and Communiplex areas, as well as the Margo Fournier Centre.

Hockey will be in the Communiplex, and the Steuart and Kinsmen arenas. Broomball will be played in the Kinsmen arena. Badminton will be held at the Woodland Campus and volleyball at the Prince Albert Student Indian Centre.

There will be three demonstration sports-boxing, taekwon-do and curling. The Prince Albert Grand Council is trying to get bowling included as well, because they need the facilities lined up, but have to see if there are enough people to warrant its addition.

Hoffman stated that all of the facilities are constantly kept in top shape and facilitating these athletes will not be a problem.

Mel Parenteau from the Prince Albert Grand Council gave the presentation to the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations' culture and recreation commission, the governing body of the games.

"Going to be a busy week in PA," he said.

Each of the nine tribal councils submits a team, and Parenteau, who's in charge of picking the PAGC team, is confident that they'll win this year's games.

"We were the champions last year in Onion Lake and the year before that," He said. "We're going to be the champions again this year."

Parenteau plans to start picking the PAGC team in February. It will be a difficult job as he'll pick 220 athletes from a prospective pool of 15,000.

The PAGC is looking at housing the athletes at Carleton where they can all be taken care of in one place.

"The Prince Albert city council was very supportive of our proposal for the games," he said.

"Certainly, from an economic development and tourism aspect, this is excellent," said Hoffman. "The tourism spinoff is generous for our community."

The winter games are the companion games to the summer games, which will next be held on the Whitecap Dakota/Sioux First Nation in June. Unlike the summer games, however, the winter games don't have a larger North American component.