November 19, 1998
Sports crusader takes up cause of old-timers
Rebels challenge idea that the game must end
DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News
CAMBRIDGE BAY — Ernie Bernhardt isn't about to hang up his hockey skates just because he made it to the third period in the game of life intact.
Nor would anybody else, if the lean and wiry 55-year-old net-minder with Cambridge Bay's old-timer squad had his way.
"It's not the end of life once you reach 40," says Bernhardt, who has recently been crusading to make competitive physical sport a respectable pastime with his not-so-young fellow northern athletes.
An avid supporter of the annual Arctic Games since its inception, Bernhardt is a self-proclaimed sports nut who thinks that when it comes to having fun and staying fit, older folks get the short end of the stick.
"If you look at sports in general around the territories, there haven't been many opportunities for athletic-type people past 40," Bernhardt says. " Everything is tailored to the younger generations."
That might change in the new year.
Bernhardt and teammates with the local Co-op Rebels have dreamed up the idea of starting a Nunavut-wide old-timers' hockey league, and an annual tournament for the fitness-minded, over-40 crowd that promises to be the envy of their own children.
Plans for the first playoffs are tentatively scheduled for mid-March in Cambridge Bay, with the best team from each region competing for the 'Nunavut Cup,' whose design has been commissioned by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. first vice-president James Eetoolook.
"We're going to have it in March to ensure that we have good quality ice," says Bernhardt, formerly the town's recreation coordinator. Regional playoffs would need to be played by the end of February, he adds.
In Cambridge Bay, the Co-op store has thrown its support behind the the local team, springing for brand new jerseys for all 16 players.
At least one community from the western territory has also expressed interest in participating in the tournament.
The word is out that other teams with an interest in vying for the cup should be casting around for corporate and community sponsors.
If enough other communities in Nunavut were to take to old-timer hockey with the same zeal as Cambridge Bay, the tournament might become an annual event, with finals being played in a different community each year.
In 1976, Bernhardt demonstrated to the world the best of Arctic traditional sports as a member of the Canadian delegation of northern aboriginal athletes to the Montreal Olympics.
When planning gets underway for the 1999 Arctic Games, Bernhardt says he'll promote the idea of a masters' category of traditional sports such as the arm pull, finger pull, knuckle hop and ear pull.
As well as being a hockey player, Bernhardt also curls and is a former boxer who thinks that a healthy attitude toward sports at all ages is a sign of a healthy community.
"Me, I'd like to live to be 80 or 90 years old and still be athletically involved," he says.