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Gloucester was not a "big town" prior to the end of the
1980's. For the most part, it was a suburb of the former City
of Ottawa in many respects, though about twice the geographical area. Even
today, what was once known as Cyrville is the most densely populated
area, attaching itself more to the former City of Vanier and
Ottawa's Overbrook area, than to the rest of Gloucester.
Gloucester North, encompassing Carson Grove, Lassiter Heights and
Beacon Hill has always been the "real suburb", with
Blackburn Hamlet having a small town feel, and Leitrim being a vast
farming community in the south end of Gloucester. This is
changing rapidly however, with Gloucester taking on an
urban
nature. Blackburn Hamlet is no longer that little Hamlet with
nothing around it but kilometers of fields, and Leitrim is growing
with new homes every day. And so, when the Bantam / Midget Tournament was founded in 1974, the role of coordinator fell upon the Gloucester Hockey Association to host the tournament. At the time, it was merely known as the Gloucester Bantam / Midget Tournament and with the success of the Bantam / Midget, then came the Pee Wee Tournament, and so many others. In 1992, it was recognized that the Tournaments were becoming a too big a task for the Gloucester Hockey Association (GHA), and so, they then delegated levels to each of the associations in the GHA. At that time, the Bantam / Midget Tournament was given to the Gloucester Centre Minor Hockey Association, which was then one of the largest association in the GHA (we are now among the smallest). In 2006, the Midget portion of the tournament was given to the Metcalfe, and an effort began in Gloucester Centre to make the Bantam portion better than it had ever been before. The first initiatives were a Skills Competition and an All-Star Games for both the "A" and "B" divisions, which found tremendous success and placed our tournament on a new level in Canada. Additionally, for the first time in the history of the tournament, we had participants from the United States attend to join teams from Ontario and Quebec. It's not enough for our tournament to be one of the largest non-contact Bantam tournaments in North America. It's to be the best Bantam Tournament on the planet for which we aspire!
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