If you’ve ever wanted to try Pickleball, now is a better time than ever at Christina Lake! Donna Wilchynski with the Christina Gateway Community Development Association put in the application to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office back in August 2017, and now the community is officially trademarked the Pickleball capital of Canada!
As she explains, she went to the courts one day to take photographs and realized how beneficial the trademark could be:
“I couldn’t believe the amount of people that were down there, and attached to those 100 players were 100 spouses, and children, and I thought ‘wow this is an incredible thing’ and ‘what the heck is Pickleball?’….”
Wilchynski adds that some new courts are on the way as well:
“They’ve expanded the courts by three, and they’re going to be done, and ironically enough I am loving the timing, the Christina Lake Parks & Recreation Commission approved the addition of the three courts not knowing about the application that I was working on.”
She says it’s one of the fastest growing sports in North America, adding that the Christina Lake Pickleball Club can always show you the ropes. She explains that her job with Gateway is to incubate projects like this with economic value and hand them over to community groups to run with. She adds that putting Christina Lake on the Pickleball map could help attract people to the area during the shoulder seasons.