Ron MacLean at the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour stop in Kelowna in 2014.
Image Credit: Rogers Hometown Hockey via Facebook
September 10, 2015 - 7:15 AM
PENTICTON - Kamloops won’t be the only Interior community celebrating the National Hockey League with Ron MacLean this season; Penticton has been named one of the stops on the second annual Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour.
The tour will make 24 stops this year, four in B.C., and features NHL alumni, hometown heroes and local entertainment over the weekend while Ron MacLean hosts from the mobile studio at each stop on every Sunday. Each stop includes free outdoor festivities to celebrate all things hockey.
“Each weekend is a uniquely Canadian experience that brings us all together,” MacLean says in a release. “Our mantra has been simple — take you someplace and tell a story. We've discovered at each stop a story that belongs to us as no other story could. It's of Canadians, with hockey at its core.”
The tour will kick off in Kitchener, Ont., for a Thanksgiving weekend three-day celebration and will move across the country. The first B.C. stop on the tour will be New Westminster Feb. 13 to 14, right after a two-week break. The following weekend the tour will stop in Abbotsford and then on to Victoria. The tour then jumps over to St. Albert before coming back to Penticton for the March 12 to 13 weekend, when the feature NHL matchup on Sportsnet will be between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings. The tour ends in Winnipeg on the April 2 weekend.
Last year, the inaugural year of the tour, more than 175,000 people celebrated at 25 different stops across the country, including Kelowna, and more than 200 minor hockey league teams participated in Rogers Hometown Hockey. Alumni appearances included Guy Lafleur, Mark Messier and Eric Lindros and 102 feature stories were shared about people in the community.
Hockey Day in Canada 2016 will also be celebrated in the Southern Interior this season. Back in June Kamloops was named as the host destination for the 13-hour national broadcast on Feb. 6. The festivities will begin Feb. 3 and will feature a variety of ‘grassroots events that highlight the city’s deep love of hockey.’
To contact a reporter for this story, email Jennifer Stahn at jstahn@infonews.ca or call 250-819-3723. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2015