The town of Niverville will not be hosting the 2026 Manitoba Winter Games.
Back in 2021, the Province of Manitoba announced that the 2022 Manitoba Winter Games which were scheduled to be held in Niverville would be cancelled due to COVID-19. The province made it clear that Niverville would have the first right to host the 2026 Manitoba Winter Games.
Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck says the town has made the decision to rather not host the 2026 Games. He says there are a few reasons for this move. First of all, Dyck says when Niverville was first awarded the Games, it did not have a hockey team playing in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. Since then, many residents have become volunteers with the Niverville Nighthawks organization, and it would be those same volunteers that would be tapped on the shoulder to help with the 2026 Games.
"We just didn't believe that we would have the necessary volunteer base to be able to do that because they were (busy) between our community fair and with this hockey team," he explains. "They've thrown themselves into it and it's been great."
Another reason is the difficulty the town was having in securing sleeping quarters. Dyck explains they would have liked to host the athletes in a school gym. However, the winter games are typically held when school is still in session. One thought was to see if the Hanover School Division would be willing to move spring break in Niverville earlier in the winter to coincide with the dates of the winter games. Dyck says the Hanover School Division felt that moving the dates would create an inconvenience for some parents who might have children in spring break at different times, depending on which schools their children attended.
Not only that, but Dyck says the games committee would have hoped to use Hanover school buses as well as staff and students as volunteers, but if they were still tied up in school, that would not be possible.
And finally, Dyck says their co-chairs for the 2022 Winter Games committee had informed them that they would no longer be available to fill that role in 2026. And, Dyck says they could not find anyone else from the community willing to take on that position.
In the end, Dyck says it is not a sad day for the town, noting some of their reasons for saying no is because of other opportunities that have come up.
"We're now focused on other provincial or national events that we might be able to do which will still bring tourism and people from outside of our community to our community," he points out. "So just a shift in focus."
According to Dyck, there is always the possibility that Niverville could host an event like this in the future. But he suggests that maybe hosting the summer games would make more sense, as that falls outside of the school calendar. In the meantime, he says a big thank you to all those who worked behind the scenes to try and bring the games to Niverville.
