DCC in the Beaver Cup

Good for team-building and client relations

With the corporate logo proudly emblazoned on their jerseys, another DCC hockey team took to the ice in a Beaver Cup tournament this year.

DCC has been participating for many years in the annual Canadian Military Engineers’ hockey competitions, which are held across the country. For the first time, a team of DCC Atlantic staff (from Halifax and Gagetown) took part in the Atlantic Region tournament, making it all the way to the finals, but losing out to the CFB Gagetown team.

Jim Burke, Coordinator, Professional Services Contracts, in Halifax, was the driving force behind the DCC team. In his view, participating in the Beaver Cup is great for team-building among DCC staff, and a chance for newer DCC employees to get to know on a social basis the folks from DND with whom they will work. He reports that it was such a success in that regard that he already has a full roster for next year’s tournament, which will be held in Halifax.

The official DCC jerseys, purchased in 2005 at the urging of Rick Gudz, Manager, Operations, in Esquimalt, made the trip from west to east coast for the Atlantic event. Gudz, who has played on Beaver Cup teams for more than 20 years, concurs about the benefits of the tournament and notes the morale-boosting effect of the jerseys. “We’re all very proud to wear them.”

The Beaver Cup began at CFB Borden in the 1970s as an event to bolster esprit de corps among the Canadian Military Engineers branch and is timed to coincide with the group’s anniversary celebrations each spring. A Quebec Beaver Cup soon followed. There are also tournaments on the Prairies and in the Ottawa area.

The first west coast tournament was held in the mid-1980s. Gudz recalls that a DCC team participated in 1999 in response to a challenge from a military colleague, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the military’s engineering group. The team from DCC won the tournament that year, and several subsequent years. Gudz expects that another all-DCC team will enter next year’s tournament, after a break this year.