West Fraser Centre was built to host the BC Hockey League, and this past weekend, it got to do that for the first time, if only for two games.
The BCHL left Quesnel after the 2010 season, the town’s Millionaires franchise moved to Chilliwack at that time. On Nov. 25 and 26, an entire new generation of fans got to see what the older hockey community had been yearning for ever since. The league brought their 2023 BCHL Road Show to town for a pair of games between the Cowichan Valley Capitals and the Victoria Grizzlies.
“The Road Show is now in its third incarnation,” said the league’s CEO Chris Hebb, who came to Quesnel in person to witness the goings on. “Having guys like Geoff Courtnall show up because he believes in the league, is just something we should all be proud of and all be supporting.”
As he looked out on the scene of the family skate going on with Courtnall and the BCHL players, Hebb said “this is what it’s all about. The game should bind communities.”
That is evident, he said, in the relationships that have been established with the host First Nations in the communities the BCHL Road Show has attended so far.
“We feel we need to go into communities where the Indigenous groups see us as part of reconciliation,” and the best part is, hockey gets to do that in a way that shows the broader community’s true feelings about recognizing the pains inflicted in the past, the understanding that it is within our society’s power to turn that around, and it isn’t an obligatory legal transaction like might be assumed if it were a government department doing it.
“It’s a wonderful game, it is our game collectively, and I remember hearing one of the Lake Babine Nation folks last year say ‘I’ve heard a lot of talk about reconciliation; this is the first time I’ve seen it.’ We are just doing this as human beings. This is not funded, we do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
It’s the game that carries the national heart, right down to the streets of Quesnel. Hundreds of people per game came through the West Fraser Centre turnstiles, and roared for both teams’ goals and key plays. In Game 1, Cowichan Valley jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period, but watched the Grizzlies claw over that deficit and earn a 5-2 victory. In the Sunday matinee, there was no scoring through the first, the teams traded singles in the second, setting up the winning goal midway through the third in a tight 2-1 Capitals victory.
Both teams went home from Quesnel with two points each, two busloads of memories and impressions, and the city got to see the BCHL’s brand of Junior hockey up close for the first time in more than a decade.
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