The Canadian Motorcycle Tourism Association and Impact Tourism are teaming up with the Fatboys Motorcycle Association in High Level to throw a week-long poker rally. Dubbed “Rumble Alberta North”, the rally will feature eight routes, or spokes, across northern Alberta leading past Slave Lake and ultimately into Grande Prairie.
Renee Charbonneau, Executive Director of the CMTA, says each of the eight spokes will feature some of the historical and cultural highlights in northern Alberta, while participants drive through to collect their poker cards.
“The idea is that each route is its own vacation with discounts, special offers, interesting historical tidbits, different tourism opportunities, and really driving down into all of those beautiful little rural Alberta communities that often get looked over for the bigger venues.
For this poker rally, participants pay for a hand and have to drive to checkpoints to collect their cards. The goal is to have the hand that most closely resembles the dealer’s at the end of the game to win a prize. A participant can better their chances by following multiple routes but have to pay a fee per route.
Fatboys Motorcycle Association has sponsored the $2,000 poker run prize, the winner of which will be announced on Saturday, August 22nd. The funds raised through participation in the rally will be going to help the Veterans Memorial Gardens and Interpretive Centre fund the construction of an Indigenous war monument, Victory Gardens, and a fence around the facility.
Charbonneau says the Interpretive Centre has readied an application to apply to Veterans Affairs for permission to construct a war monument, based on the likeness of the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument in Ottawa.
“We have identified large numbers of different ethnicities of soldiers from this region that are highly underrepresented in history books, etcetera. The whole idea behind the Indigenous war monument is to bring a little bit of Ottawa to Grande Prairie for those who may never get the opportunity to go see the real [monument].”
At the conclusion of the rally, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held to award the prize for the poker run.