ABSTRACT
The Canada Winter Games (CWG) was held in Whitehorse, Yukon, from 23 February to 10 March 2007. This fortieth anniversary of the Canada Games was also the first time that these Games occurred “north of 60,” meaning north of the sixtieth parallel in Canada. Sportspeople in the North have had a long-standing interest in hosting the CWG. When the Games were awarded in 2001 to Whitehorse, a community of twenty-three thousand that would require forty-five hundred volunteers over the two weeks of this event, I hoped to be part of and contribute in some small way toward these very memorable Games. A pan-northern (i.e., Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) hosting approach was adopted for these Games, along with the inclusion of a competition among northern athletes in Inuit and Dene Games, including medals, as a demonstration sporting event. The inclusion of traditional games as an event made the 2007 CWG even more significant in the eyes of those Northerners who had advocated this development for years. 1
