The annual Canadian Rockies Snow Battle is cancelled, leaving snowball fights to the kids this winter.
The event, which has taken place each November for the past two years, was nixed by Tourism Jasper and its shareholders, despite a five-year contract with Yukigassen Canada.
According to Mary Darling, CEO of Tourism Jasper, the rationale for cancelling the tournament is to allow the destination marketing organization to focus on its two anchor events: the Jasper Dark Sky Festival and Jasper in January.
“We want to make sure that we’re focussing on these two festivals and doing them right, getting them set up and then as we move into implementing the [Event Tourism] Strategy, then we’ll look at what is the next signature event that will work for the whole community,” she said.
Jasper first hosted a Yukigassen tournament during the 2012 Jasper in January festival, and later signed a five-year agreement with Yukigassen Canada to host the national championships. The remainder of that agreement was passed on to a group in Quebec, said Darling, noting that Quebec has exprienced a greater uptake to the sport than Alberta has.
Yukigassen, which translates to snow battle, is a sport that was created in Japan during the late ‘80s; it’s like a cross between dodgeball and capture the flag. Two teams of seven, all geared-up in CSA-approved hockey helmets, face-off on a 40-metre-long court and attempt to either capture the opposing team’s flag, or eliminate its players by hitting them with snowballs.
“It’s a lot of work,” said Darling of the organization and facilitation of the national championships. “Human resource-wise, there’s a lot of volunteers that are required and they need to know some very niche and specific things.”
And although there was some increased interest during last year’s event, with more teams coming in from the region, it wasn’t enough for Tourism Jasper to move forward with the battle.
“We had to make a tough decision. We want to do things well and do them to the best that we can; if we’re not going to do them awesomely, then we can’t do them,” said Darling.
“Yukigassen, from a bigger picture, really is something that eventually could come back, it’s at the right time of year and it’s something new and innovative, but just currently it was a joint decision with Tourism Jasper and our shareholder group that we need to focus on dark sky and Jasper in January and really get those to world class levels and then start developing our next event.”
Nicole Veerman
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