Prescott Seeks Support For Hockeyville
PRESCOTT, Ont. - Growing up in Prescott Ont., 48-year old Jeff Morris remembers a time when the small Canadian village was linked to the City of Ogdensburg by much more than the international bridge spanning the St. Lawrence River.
Morris, who enjoyed a brief career in the Canadian Football League, had tryouts with NFL teams and later worked for both the NHL and ESPN, returned to Prescott six years ago to take the helm of a three-gneration family business as Managing Editor and Publisher of the Morris Newspaper Group.
Morris would love to see the high-level spirit of cooperation and friendship revived to restore the social bonds between the municipalities which he feels has been undermined over the last decade by world events and heightened securities at the border.
“What has happened was caused by events beyond our control,” said Morris who is now playing an active role in an event which he feels could be the start of an era of heightened interaction between Prescott and Ogdensburg.
Prescott now stands in first place in Canada for member registrations for the 2012 Kraft Hockeyville contest, a national contest run by CBC and promoted on Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. The winning town receives a $100,000 arena renovation and will host an NHL pre-season hockey game. Prescott’s Leo Boivin Community Centre Arena, which was built in 1967, is in need of a major facelift.
The leaders of the effort to make Prescott “Kraft Hockeyville” have invited the community of Ogdensburg to help with the bid. Ogdensburg area residents are asked to log on the Kraft Hockeyville website (http://krafthockeyville.cbc.ca/index/find-community?location=ontario#cndtable) click on the Communities tab, then click Ontario, then double click Members.
There is also a Prescott Hockeyville page on The Facebook.
The top 15 towns (three each from BC, West, Ontario, Quebec, Maritimes) will be announced during the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast on Sat., March 3. Once the top three from each region have been announced members may vote for their chosen communities as often as they want.
“The extra support will help us greatly, as we are a town of 4400 people going up against cities,” said Morris.
“Many of us who grew up in Prescott have friends and relatives, either blood or marriage, in Ogdensburg, and vise versa. This would also provide a very timely gesture of friendship as the events celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 are about to get underway.”
The “Hockeyville” campaign has generated pride and optimism in the village and that pride will be on display on Friday as Prescott will celebrate “Hockey Day”. According to Morris this community wide event will see residents and students from local schools wearing hockey sweaters and then attend a rally from noon to 12:30 p.m. at Fort Wellington.
“We are basically shutting the village down for one-half hour and we are inviting people from Ogdensburg to attend. We will be singing “O’Canada” and if people from Ogdensburg attend, we will sing both national anthems” said Morris.
Morris and other members of Prescott’s “ Kraft Hockeyville” campaign hope that a hockey friendship day could be held next year where youth teams from Ogdensburg would come and play exhibition games against teams from Prescott.
