Jessica Klinkenberg
Northern News Services
Published Friday, December 21, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - An Alberta based corporation's donation to the Arctic Winter Games will leave a lasting legacy for Yellowknife schools.

The ATCO group, a global utilities and power generation giant based in Calgary, will be donating 105 laptops to the Games.

Following the week-long sporting event, scheduled between March 9 and 15, the laptops will be donated to the three school boards in Yellowknife.

Dave Hurley, the general manager for the AWG, said the laptops are a weight off his mind.

"I always call it a great big jigsaw puzzle," he said.

"There's just a million things out there. There's so much to this. "

The laptops are Dell computers, which ATCO is providing through its laptop recycling program.

Lisa Maragh, the company's manager of community investments, said they became involved because of business dealings in Yellowknife.

Northland Utilities is part of the ATCO Group.

"We do have an interest. We have employees that work and live in that community. The employees have expressed that they wanted to get involved in the Games."

Officials from the Yellowknife Catholic School Board and Yellowknife Education District 1 said they had not officially been informed of the laptop donations.

Aside from the laptops, ATCO is partnering with Yellowknife trucking company RTL to provide Games' athletes with showering and change facilities.

ATCO will be donating the wash cars and RTL will be transporting the trailers from Calgary to Yellowknife and back again.

With only a few months left until the Games begin ,small details still need to be ironed out to ensure they go flawlessly, Hurley said.

"From our point of view, when you sit on my side of the desk, you've got to put all of this together to get to the final product."

Thankfully two major sponsors of the games were able to help with this, he said.