Residents of Killarney-Turtle Mountain have responded to a national physical activity challenge and logged thousands of hours of activity.

It was all part of ParticipACTION's Community Better Challenge. The ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge is a national physical activity initiative that encourages Canadians to get active in search of Canada’s Most Active Community.

It’s open to everyone and all minutes tracked on the app and website from June 1 – 30 counted toward a community’s total score. After June 30, 50 finalist communities are invited to submit an application explaining why they deserve to be Canada’s Most Active Community.

April Archambault is recreation director for Killarney-Turtle Mountain and says areas residents really got behind the contest and had a strong showing. “We had a whole month long of free scheduled activities and we logged almost one million minutes of physical activity during the month of June. That put us in 4th spot out of 166 communities in Manitoba and we made the top 50 across Canada so we were pretty thrilled about that.”

 

One community will earn the top prize of $100,000 and title of being Canada’s most active. There will also be prizing for the most active community in each province and territory.

 

“We now have the opportunity to still be in the running for the top prize money. They look at how many people in the community participated and how many organizations got involved with the incentive. There's an application form and you tell them how you’d use the money and why you deserve to be crowned the most active community.”

Killarney-Turtle Mountain submitted an application this week and hopes to hear the results on July 27th.

Archambault says beyond the national grand prize of $100,000 there are provincial prizes ranging from $7,500 and $15,000.

“That’s more in our reach but who knows we are hoping for the best” said April Archambault.