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North of 60 athletes shine bright

While praise is due to all of the athletes competing in Prince George for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, special recognition must go to the competitors from Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

While praise is due to all of the athletes competing in Prince George for the 2015 Canada Winter Games, special recognition must go to the competitors from Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

There will always be a warm spot in my heart for all things and all people north of 60, since I grew up in Hay River, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, until I was 13.

The remote location and the isolation (sorry, area residents, but you have no idea what these concepts really are) forces parents to keep their children in sports. The endless winter darkness needs to be filled, so people come together to play and to compete.

When I was a boy, Hay River hosted the Arctic Winter Games, where athletes from across Canada's North, as well as Alaska, came together in a town of 3,500 residents to compete in winter sports, including uniquely arctic sports, like snowshoeing, dog mushing and traditional Dene games.

The true challenge for elite Arctic athletes, however, is when they journey south to compete with the provinces. It can be extremely humbling, to put it mildly. Up north, with less access to competition and coaching, player development rarely occurs to the level it does in the more populated provinces. As a result, most of the athletes from the three northern territories in Prince George have had to endure some humiliating losses, heavily outscored and outplayed by more experienced competition.

I know the feeling well.

In Grade 7, my last school year in the N.W.T., I competed in the South Slave elementary track and field meet in Fort Simpson. The fastest sprinter in my school, I placed seventh in the boys 100 metres, even beating boys from Yellowknife, which was a big deal.

A few months later, in Grade 8 at George Elliot high school in Winfield, just north of Kelowna, I found out I wasn't even the seventh fastest runner in my grade, never mind the school with 500 students. The only sport I was better at than most of the other kids was badminton, which I played extensively in Hay River, but that was only because kids in the Okanagan grow up playing tennis.

Put another way, most northern athletes get used to coming down south and getting beat bad.

That's why it was news when the Nunavut women's curling team won a game. Nunavut had never won a curling game at any Canada Winter Games until this week, defeating Yukon 8-2.

Yet there are exceptions to the rule.

At Otway, Yukon cross-country skiers and biathletes have been formidable. The six medals - two of them gold - won there by Yukon, puts the territory ahead of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in the medal standings, as well as the N.W.T. and Nunavut. Whithorse's Nadia Moser won three medals in the biathlon and her silver medal in the women's 12.5 K individual race came at the expense of Prince George's Emily Dickson, who had to settle for bronze.

A legendary inspiration for Moser, as well as teammates Knute Johnsgaard and Annah Hanthorn, both gold medallists this week at Otway in cross-country skiing, would no doubt be Shirley and Sharon Firth. The twin sisters from Inuvik are sources of great pride among northerners and Canada's aboriginal community. Members of the national cross-country ski team for 17 years, the Firth sisters competed in four Winter Olympics. According to their online biography, they combined for 48 national titles and 79 national championship medals during their careers.

By the time of the Arctic Winter Games in Hay River in 1978, the Firth sisters had already competed in two Olympics and their story was known to all us Territories kids. Most of the time, we'd get thumped when we'd go south to compete against the provincial kids but if we worked hard and kept practising, maybe we could follow in the footsteps of the Firths.

All of the athletes competing in Prince George are fantastic people with great stories to tell but, forgive me for saying, the kids from the three territories are truly something special and are the epitome of determination and sportsmanship.