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Flin Flon enters final round of snowmobile vote

The final round of a regional snowmobiling vote has come down to this: a battle between Flin Flon and a small B.C. village.
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The final round of a regional snowmobiling vote has come down to this: a battle between Flin Flon and a small B.C. village.

Flin Flon has advanced to the finals of the SnoRiders Sledtown Showdown competition, advancing past Hudson Bay in the semifinal round and beating them with 56 per cent of the vote. It’s the second year in a row Flin Flon has advanced to the contest’s final round. Flin Flon also advanced to last year’s Sledtown Showdown final after defeating Hudson Bay in the semifinal round.

In the western Canadian finals, Flin Flon will face McBride, B.C., a village of 616 people near the Alberta border by the Fraser River and Rocky Mountains. The village won the contest two years and 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.

So far, just over 1,700 votes have been cast in the online ballot. Flin Flon leads the way with 1,000 votes, compared to 824 for McBride – enough for a 55 per cent to 45 per cent lead.

Flin Flon advanced through the online contest by defeating Russell, Pinawa, Snow Lake and Thompson, then defeating Hudson Bay, Sask. in a province-by-province matchup.

For the previous two 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 was still up as of Feb. 19.

A similar wager was made between the City of Flin Flon and the Town of Hudson Bay. After the results were announced and Flin Flon was confirmed to have won, Flin Flon Mayor Cal Huntley said the Flin Flon flag would be flown over Hudson Bay’s town hall at a future date.

“I would like to acknowledge the town of Hudson Bay for being good sports and good competition for the challenge,” he said.

“They were good-natured enough, even though we were winning before we got the wager in, to participate.”

Huntley urged people living both within Flin Flon and away from the community, including in communities that Flin Flon had defeated, to cast votes for Flin Flon in the final vote.

“We've gone as far as we did last year. We don't want to opt out in the finals,” he said. 

“Everybody that we competed with, part of the deal was that they supported us going forward. Hopefully they do that, we can generate a lot of interest and make it to the finish line ahead.”

The winning community wins a special trophy from SnoRiders and a series of feature articles by the magazine. 

Interested people can cast one vote per device per day by going to snoriderswest.com/sledtown_showdown. Voting ends March 1 at 11:59 p.m.

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