Get the champagne ready. Flin Flon has run away with the SnoRiders Sledtown Showdown crown.
Voting in the final round of the competition ended at midnight March 2, with final voting tallies showing an overwhelming lead in votes cast for Flin Flon over McBride, B.C. – 7,242 to 4,402, good enough for a 62 per cent share in the voting.
The competition, an online vote pitting communities against each other in an attempt to find western Canada’s best snowmobiling destination, has become a cause celebre in the north in recent years. Flin Flon finished second in the final vote last year, losing out in the last online vote to Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
McBride, a village of 616 people near the Alberta border by the Fraser River and Rocky Mountains, won the contest two years ago. This year, McBride beat out Tumbler Ridge, B.C. – last year’s contest winner, the community that beat out Flin Flon in the finals – in the provincial round.
Flin Flon advanced through the online contest by defeating Russell, Pinawa, Snow Lake and Thompson, then topping Hudson Bay, Sask. in a province-by-province matchup.
In previous rounds, municipal governments have gotten involved with the vote. Local councils from Flin Flon and Thompson made a wager during their round that the loser would need to fly the winner’s flag over their local city hall. Flin Flon won the round and Thompson made good on the bet Feb. 7, with Thompson mayor Colleen Smook and Flin Flon’s Hapnot Collegiate curling team hoisting a Flin Flon flag over Thompson’s city hall. While the flag was originally only supposed to fly for one week, it flew much longer as a pro-northern show of support.
A similar wager took place with the Town of Hudson Bay, with a Flin Flon flag being sent south and flown by local government after the northern community won.
The winning community wins a special trophy from SnoRiders and a series of feature articles by the magazine.
