Thank you, Madam Speaker. Happy Caribou Carnival to you. Madam Speaker, yesterday began the start of the 40th Caribou Carnival for the city of Yellowknife. This long-standing tradition began here as kind of a get together of people to celebrate spring, and has evolved into what it is today. It attracts hundreds and hundreds of visitors to our community.
I would like to congratulate the Caribou Carnival group for the marvellous job that they've done thus far. They've put together this relatively enormous project with fairly few flaws in it. In particular, I would like to congratulate the Caribou Carnival Queen, Tasha Rogers, who won that position yesterday for the largest number of tickets sold. The princess is Gaeleen MacPherson. Some 48,000 tickets were sold for a dollar a piece and that money goes to sponsoring prizes and various events that go along with this Caribou Carnival.
Today also marks the start of the 150-mile Canadian Championship Dog Derby. There are 14 teams registered, teams from all across Canada. There's a team from the United States and also from Europe. And, of course, our annual bouquet of Becks will be running in the race. This year's particularly pleasing for us because we now have a lady dog musher, Heather Beck, who is going to be running for the first time. As well, Madam Speaker, this is the beginning of the 23rd year that the Yellowknife Rotary Club has been responsible for the running of the dog race.
It involves a lot of work, but it is an event that attracts international recognition to our part of the country and to the sport of dog mushing, which evolved out of a necessity in the territories. People used dogs for work purposes. They still play an important part in our tradition. With that, congratulations to everybody who has participated. Thank you, very much.
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