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By Alessia Proietti

ParticipACTION

Red Deer named most active community in Canada winning $100,000

Jul 26, 2022 | 4:39 PM

Red Deer has just been named Canada’s most active community and awarded a $100,000 prize.

Through the 2022 ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge, Red Deerians not only helped the city earn this title but also to become the first community in Alberta to do so.

Mayor Ken Johnston says while the purpose of his role is to engage the community, physical activity runs in the DNA of the city, from sports culture to having the most trails per capita in a city at 160 km.

“The city is actually developed for activity. So there’s an intentionality, I’ll say, around being active in Red Deer. When you look at the neighbourhoods we’ve constructed and the infrastructure that we’ve constructed, it lends itself to bicycling; it lends itself to walking, of course, jogging, running. It enables people to go through our parks system comfortably, safely,” he said.

Its third edition, the Community Better Challenge is a national initiative encouraging Canadians to get physically active. Throughout the month of June, communities competed by logging activity, with organizations and families using the ParticipACTION website and individuals using the app. Fifty finalist communities were then selected to submit an application explaining why they deserved to be Canada’s Most Active Community.

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The mayor confirmed that Red Deer was consistently in the top three in Alberta throughout the challenge, holding first place in Alberta for roughly one week and first place in Canada for a few days. The city was also ranked in the top five communities for the entire month in both the province and country.

Denise Fredeen, Move Your Mood Coordinator with Alberta Health Services, listed that in 2021, physical activities in Red Deer were recorded 15,000 times on the website and 430 individuals tracked through the app. In 2022, Red Deer logged 153,000 times on the website and 700 community members used the app.

She also stated that while six million minutes of physical activity were recorded in 2021, 19 million minutes were logged in 2022.

The City says some of the engagement activities throughout the month of June included:

• Mayor Johnston’s challenge to city staff and citizens to get involved
• Red Deer Wellness Alliance encouraging organizations within Red Deer and central Alberta to apply for the ParticipACTION grant and for less-active community members to create mini ParticipACTION events
• The Move Your Mood program, with funding from the ParticipACTION Saputo grant, to create a local challenge, offering prizes for participants who shared their photos on social media
• The creation of a Community Better Red Deer social media platform where local media outlets shared the information along with schools, sport and community organizations and businesses
• Partnership between Move Your Mood & SPARC Red Deer to spray paint interactive games in two new locations, challenging families to play and win prizes.

“We know that when we get physically active and practice healthy lifestyles that it improves, first and foremost, your mental health, and that is the Move you Mood message. And when we stick with it, as Mayor Johnston said, for a lifetime, our physical health improves,” said Fredeen.

Along with the title earned on July 22, the City received a $100,000 prize, to be used to support physical activity opportunities in the community. Jill Craig, Senior Communications Consultant for the City, said they will be meeting with recreational crews and organizations in the city to brainstorm how the funds should be distributed.

ParticipACTION is a national non-profit charitable organization supporting Canadians to make physical activity a vital part of everyday life. Their app is available year round with various challenges and prizes.

The 2022 Community Better Challenge had more than 600,000 participants in more than 1,700 communities in Canada, tracking over 500 million physical activity minutes.

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