Saskatchewan town recruits labour force through hockey

Actually, the headline might be a bit misleading.

Is a Saskatchewan town trying to recruit workers by offering them a chance to play competitive hockey or is the hockey team recruiting good hockey players by offering them a job?

Bit of both, really.

"In collaboration with the Biggar Senior Hockey Management team, AGI is open to providing long term jobs, career and training opportunities to interested applicants," reads the overview of a job posting at adecco.ca.

Biggar, Saskatchewan, population 2,161, didn't have enough players to ice a senior team last season.

They'd like to change that and a local company - AGI Envirotank - has some job openings.

Why not marry the two?

"We're trying to attract more people into the community so we can have a team this year," AGI's Director of Operations, Jeff Burton, told CBC.

The Biggar Nationals need players in order to rejoin the Sask Valley Hockey League, which boasts teams like the Beechy Bombers, Eston Ramblers and this year's champs, the Kyle Elks. The Nationals have missed the last three seasons but have designs on rejoining the league this autumn.

It's a Senior B loop and as Burton says, "It's pretty good hockey."

There are Senior hockey leagues all over Canada and they are filled with players who just about made it to major junior, sprinkled with some that did, and even - on occasion - the odd retired NHL or AHL vet who still wants to cut the ice competitively.

Senior hockey won't make you rich. In fact, by itself, it won't allow you to earn a sustainable living. So, you'd better have another stream of cash and a decent-paying job is the carrot being dangled in front of warriors who might just be convinced to make the move to Biggar.

Generally speaking, Burton says, it's difficult to get people to go to rural Saskatchewan. The province continues to boom, but the larger centres like Saskatoon and Regina seem to be the focal points. Biggar, about a hundred clicks west of Saskatoon, could use a wave of immigration to fill hockey skates as well as jobs at AGI.

If you can play, they'd like to hear from you. Doesn't matter if you don't have all the skills needed to work at AGI. They'll train you, as long as you've got the skills to fill the opponents' net or keep them from filling Biggar's.

The job posting for "Hockey Alumni" gives a description of what AGI and the Biggar Nationals are looking for:

Biggar has some impressive sporting history, including being the hometown of legendary curler Sandra Schmirler. It's a fact they are proud of, boasting about it on a sign for all to see. Any hockey players who take up the invitation to play there could work on their curling as well, at Biggar's four-sheeter.

There's a sense of humour about the place, too. The town's official slogan - it's even displayed on signs on the outskirts - is "New York is big but this is Biggar." According to the municipal website, that slogan was concocted back in 1909 when a survey crew - a little into the drink - wrote the slogan on a sign as a prank. Folks in the town liked it and adopted it.

This idea of sending up a flare to catch the attention of competitive hockey players who aren't quite sure what their next step ought to be, is not exactly new.

Burton says it's a strategy that worked in Biggar once before. His father used it to recruit players back in the 1980's and some of them, he claims, have remained in the town to this day.

Hockey, it seems, led them to Biggar and better things. (Memo to Biggar town council. You can have that one if you're ever looking to replace the old slogan)

There won't be riches but Burton can promise some notoriety.

"...Certainly people in the community know who the players are," Burton told CBC. "So I guess they'll have rural fame."