How a remote northern community finds connection through hockey

DÉLĮNĘ, N.W.T. — When you step into the Jerry Vital Memorial Arena, look up. 

Above you, winding around the rink’s small lobby just a few feet below the point the walls meet the ceiling, you’ll see a line of wood panels, painted a yellow that matches the bold shade of the plastic kickplates lining the base of the puck-marked boards around the ice. Adorning the border are messages and signatures and sweater numbers scrawled by the many NHLers who have visited this rink, situated half a kilometre from the shore of Great Bear Lake in the small community of Délı̨nę, Northwest Territories.   

One of those signatures belongs to Sandy McCarthy though he jokes that, “I think it faded away.” The former NHLer left it in 2016, during his first visit to the remote community of about 550 in the heart of the Sahtu Lands of the Dene People. 

Maybe the ink has lightened a little, but McCarthy’s mark on Délı̨nę — and its imprint on him — has only grown since that first trip up north. Hockey is what brought McCarthy to Délı̨nę eight years ago, on the invitation of his friend, and now Chief of the charter community, Danny Gaudet, who implored the former pro to speak with some of the area’s youth and run a few skating workshops. And hockey is what brought McCarthy back six years later, to run the hockey program in the community he now calls home. 

McCarthy is reflective as he talks about his early relationship with the game — a passion that would carry him to 11 seasons in the NHL with the Flames, Lightning, Flyers, Hurricanes, Rangers, and Bruins between 1993 and 2004.

“Hockey was like a safe place for me,” says McCarthy, who was born in North York, Ont., and grew up in Barrie, and has Indigenous ancestry on his father’s side. “I knew everything was always cool when I was at the arena and playing the game that I always loved.” 

He hopes he can cultivate the same feeling for other kids. 

“For me, I try to give them that experience, where they can come to the arena and have a place where it’s always safe and they can express themselves and be themselves, as long as they’re following our one simple rule, which is respect,” he says. 

In the warmer months, he runs a fitness program as well as ball hockey out of the arena; he’s also started introducing the kids to lacrosse. Games of tag and hide ‘n seek often break out, too, during unstructured time. “It’s just a place for them to be kids,” says McCarthy. 

Délı̨nę is a long way from McCarthy’s previous post — he spent two seasons coaching the MJAHL’s Campbellton Tigers in New Brunswick — but he’s proud to be part of the community and provide kids with the support and tools they need to succeed on the ice and, through sport, build confidence off it. 

For three seasons each year, Délı̨nę is accessible only by plane, small charters and scheduled flights operating most days out of the tiny airport just a five-minute drive inland, a modest runway nestled among the pines. Everything is flown in — twice-a-week mail deliveries, groceries to restock the shelves of the Northern Store and the Great Bear Co-op — and visitors come by air, too. It’s a 90-minute flight to Yellowknife. Routes also run to and from other settlements in the Sahtu Region, like Norman Wells and Tulita to the west. 

Summer days are long — it’s easy to lose track of time when the sun doesn’t sleep much this far north — and often include a few hours on the water (and, if you’re lucky, a shore lunch of freshly-caught trout, fried up with beans warmed over the fire). Fishing is a way of life here, and a way of feeding the community. There’s a running joke that if you’re wondering what’s for dinner, go check the freezer — the one called “Great Bear Lake,” which is always well-stocked with trout thiiiiis biiiig while the adjoining river is rich in smaller, but equally nourishing, arctic grayling that can be caught by the dozen in a single afternoon. Kids here grow up learning from their elders about the rich traditions of hunting and fishing, and the importance of sharing nature’s gifts. This is a community that runs on helping neighbours. Shared meals are a big part of that. 

In this regard, too, the arena serves as a central hub — not just for play, but for hosting holiday events like Christmas and New Year’s gatherings. Government and other community events and meals are held there, too, in the adjoining hall. A kitchen — newly renovated, thanks to a partnership with Quaker launched this summer — makes the arena feel more homey.

There’s no ice in the hottest months, but McCarthy keeps the doors open as much as he can.  

“I open at 11 a.m. in the summer, and [the kids] would come in at 11:05 and they would stay until the minute I closed the door — so, seven, eight hours a day just hanging out at the arena, knowing that it’s a good spot,” he says. 

Hockey is the great connecter here. After all, the game’s history in the region runs as deep as the waters on which Délı̨nę sits. 

McCarthy, far left, poses with local kids in Délı̨nę. (Photo by Kelsey Scobie/Sportsnet).

Délı̨nę is widely considered the birthplace of hockey. Evidence for its claim can be traced back nearly 200 years to a journal entry written by the British naval officer and colonial administrator Sir John Franklin, who described his men playing a game on skates with sticks on the frozen “Little Lake,” an inlet of Great Bear — the earliest written record of the sport.

“Everybody knows and believes, 100 per cent, that this was the birthplace of hockey,” says McCarthy. “And I think the kids and the people that are involved in the game really enjoy that.”

That history and the community’s love of the game have made Délı̨nę a destination for alumni events. Last March, former members of the Calgary Flames (including McCarthy, of course) and Vancouver Canucks hit the ice for a game of shinny at the arena as part of a special visit to the area spearheaded by McCarthy and Gaudet. The Chief’s passion for hockey shines through whenever he talks about the game — a mealtime spent with him includes stories of his youth growing up playing in cross-territory tournaments, winning despite being short-handed — and he’s driven to bring as many current and past NHLers as he can to his community to share their stories with the kids of Délı̨nę. 

To him, the game offers more than a shared sense of teamwork, camaraderie and passion. It brings a reason for remote communities to gather during what can be some of the year’s darkest, most isolated months. Winter days are as short as summer nights, but rather than retreating, the people of Délı̨nę extend their reach in the coldest months. Once the cold really takes hold and the lakes freeze over, the community opens up in a different way, with the presence of the winter highways — roads made possible only by way of ice. These frozen roads connect Délı̨nę to neighbouring towns. Like many of Délı̨nę’s other residents, McCarthy’s made the road trip to Yellowknife a few winters now. He admits, it was a little nervewracking at first to drive such distances over ice, but “it’s pretty cool when you’re coming out of the bush and onto a big lake in the middle of winter.” It’s a whole other feeling of surreality when you see a transport truck pass on the frozen freeway.  

Flying can be expensive — especially when you’re trying to transport an entire team to a tournament in another part of the Territory, gear and all. So, these winter highways are a crucial connection that allow communities to gather in the name of hockey.

With no shortage of winter ice time back home in Délı̨nę, McCarthy also runs a skating program for the school — two groups a day, five days a week as part of the kids’ phys. ed class — plus free skating for families on weekends. 

He and Gaudet have big plans for the town’s rink. They dream of being able to host youth from nearby communities for hockey camps year-round, and will continue to work to bring pros in to inspire future generations in the place that served as hockey’s first home ice — players and role models these kids can look up to.

As another winter approaches, McCarthy will continue his work to cultivate a safe place, where the lights are on, there’s food on the tables, and the names on the walls remind everyone of the connections that can be made here. 

That, he says, “is what that arena is for them.”