Arctic Winter Games
Northwest Territories' MLA Bisaro on Host Society for Arctic Games
Leaving Montreal for the harsher Canadian North thirty years ago, MLA Wendy Bisaro has thrived with a career in the Legislative Assembly and international competition.
It’s times like these that MLA and former phys. ed. teacher Wendy Bisaro doesn’t miss Montreal’s balmy winters all that much.
A native of Pointe-Claire, Bisaro now resides and represents the Frame Lake district in Yellowknife, capital city of the undisputedly frigid Northwest Territories. Neither snow, nor sleet, nor gloom of much longer winter nights can detract from the love she has for the Greater White North, though. And with the 20th edition of the Arctic Winter Games set to descend on her ‘new’ city March 9th-15th, and with Bisaro serving in the volunteer capacity of vice president of the host society for the games, that love is probably at its strongest.
“I believe in giving back to the community in which we live and work,” she says, a former participant, herself, in basketball, dating back as much as 36 years. She moved away from Montreal just prior to then.
“I recognize the value of the games, and want them to continue,” she says. “I was part of the 2005 Yellowknife "bid" team which won the right to hold the games here… I love my city and want to showcase it and the games.”
Bisaro’s official title is director of care and comfort and she is in charge of six committees overseeing, among other things, accommodations, food services, and security. According to Bisaro, it’s her and her colleagues’ job to “help produce a good ‘show.’’ In that sense, the outlook is positive. This will mark the fifth time the AWG are in Yellowknife, where they were first held in 1970. This year, nine different teams, totaling 1,850 participants, will compete. The call for competition is not limited merely to this continent as contingents from Russia and Scandinavia regularly take part alongside, for example, Alaska and Arctic Quebec. Sports range in everything from hockey and indoor soccer to the native-to-northern-communities dog mushing, high kick, and kneel jump events.
As a competitor, Bisaro’s most memorable experience came in 1976 in Schefferville, Quebec, when the Northwest Territories came within two points of defeating powerhouse Alaska in overtime for the gold medal in basketball. Bisaro also represented the Northwest Territories at various Canada Games as an athlete and then coach. A mother of two, Bisaro, now 60, was elected to the 16th Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories last year. She first entered politics in 2000 when she served on the Yellowknife city council following her career in education, which began in Montreal. Upon receiving her Bachelor of Education degree from McGill University in 1968, she spent three years teaching at Beaconsfield High School before journeying northwards for a position at Sir John Franklin High School.
“I guess it was the lure of the unknown, a chance for adventure and to explore a new part of Canada,” she explains.
It is no surprise that Bisaro eventually made the transition from phys. ed. to working in support of the games. She, after all, has been involved as an organizer over the past few decades with such bodies as the Yellowknife Basketball Association and Sport North, a group that seeks to promote and develop amateur sport throughout the territory. The key to dealing with the huge workload for her is to continue embracing all that has welcomingly surrounded her all this time, whether it be sports, that northern chill, or both. She plays golf in the summer, and, in the winter, perhaps the greatest testament to her affection for the North, she, put simply, stays.
“I came here for a year, and that was in 1971,” she says. “I love it here. It’s my home.”
