Arctic Games - getting there as tough as competing

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Dave Hurley may be a travel agent's best friend right now.

The executive director of Sport North - N.W.T.'s coordinating body for amateur sports - has to get 351 athletes, their coaches and chaperones to Slave Lake for the Arctic Winter Games in March. That means buying plane tickets. Many, many plane tickets.

Hurley has been juggling plane schedules for 14 years to get Team N.W.T. to the Games. The athletes this year are from 40 of the territories' 59 communities, scattered over 3.3 million square km. A handful of the towns, villages and hamlets are connected to the south by the Mackenzie Highway, but Hurley won't risk sending competitors - many under 18 - by bus in winter.

"The minimum drive on the highway between a couple of the major centres is three or four hours by bus. And in the wintertime, when it gets 35, 40 below, you aren't going to send a kid on a bus, because if the bus breaks down on this highway, God help them. There's nothing out there for hours and hours before anybody comes along," said Hurley.

The athletes from smaller communities will travel by scheduled or charter plane to Yellowknife directly or else to one of the N.W.T.'s larger airports - Hay River and Inuvik in the west and Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet in the east to connect with a flight to the capital. These trips are no Edmonton-Calgary hops. Some communities have one scheduled flight a week or less.

Hurley had a dry run of his scheduling in January when he had to get 1,400 athletes to the territorial trials to qualify them for the games competition. The trials were held in several larger communities.

"The had to be brought in, bused in, chartered in by small aircraft, plus we had two 737s flying continuously. It took us thirty-something hours continuous flying from the time we started to get everyone into the centres to compete," exclaimed Hurley.

Hurley spent 27 hours at the Yellowknife airport with volunteers waiting for flights to arrive.

One young athlete and her chaperone got home to Sanikiluaq five days after the trials in Tukltoyaktuk ended. They criss-crossed the country because there is nothing resembling a direct flight from Tuk to the island in Hudson Bay.

"She had to fly from Sanikiluaq to somewhere in Northern Quebec, to Montreal. Overnight in Montreal, up to Iqaluit. Overnight in Iqaluit to Yellowknife Yellowknife to Inuvik. Inuvik to Tuk. Then reverse the whole situation.

"There are so many things you have to take into confederation. And up here, when you take things into consideration, it costs you bucks. Big bucks," says Hurley. The final cost of the travel has not yet been calculated.

Weather is always a worry in the north, particularly in the Eastern and Central Arctic where storms can blow up quickly and cut off air traffic for days at a time. The treeless communities have nothing to protect them from the weather. It is common to see houses covered in snowdrifts with tunnels carved to their front doors.

Hurley watches the forecasts as the travel dates approach. If there is a threat of a storm, he gets his athletes out early. Better for them to hang around in Yellowknife for a few days than miss their competition.

"I've been at this long enough that I know it's going to happen somewhere. So, you just don't panic, because if you panic, it all stops. We make alternate plans and we do everything in our power - sometimes it costs more money - to make sure the kids get there.

"We watch the weather forecasts here and if it looks like she's going to blow, we move them quick to get them out....The most important thing is to get the kids there. If she blows, we can deal with that."

Despite Hurley's scheduling and alternate plans, there have been years when bad weather kept athletes out of the game.

The Arctic Winter Games are the biggest competition most N.W.T. athletes will ever attend. This year's team represents approximately 1.5 per cent of the N.W.T.'s population. Former participants still wear their souveir jackets years after competing as a badge of honor. With few roads south and the high cost of air travel, the games represent one of the few chances N.W.T. athletes have to compete outside their home regions.

"This is a big thing for us. I mean, we can't jump in the car and go play in Saskatchewan," said Hurley.

Through all the planning, Hurley is assisted by dozens of volunteers who offer their time to pick athletes up from the airport, run the trials, solicit donations and open their homes as billets.

"Nobody knows the hours that are volunteered or the dollar value. I don't know how you would even calculate it....it's probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can't buy volunteerism."