A lot of dominoes had to fall into place for Eden Valentino and her sisters Siena and Sofia Hoff to volunteer together at the 2026 Manitoba Games.

First of all, Eden had to wind up in Thompson and convince her sisters to join her in the Hub of the North. 

Eden moved to the city with her husband Justin, a born and raised Thompsonite. And then she persuaded Siena and Sofia to make the move north.

“You can blame my mother-in-law and my husband and their love of Thompson,” says Eden. “This rubbed off on everybody. The opportunities and the people here made it an easy choice at the time.”

“It was a good move,” says Sofia. “It’s good to be all together again.”

After Eden signed up to be the marketing and communications director for the Games, she persuaded her sisters to join her again. Sofia, a teacher at R.D. Parker Collegiate, worked directly with her sister in the marketing division while Siena, a nurse in the maternity ward at Thompson General Hospital, helped out as a medical volunteer.

“I’m happy to help,” says Siena.

Sofia was equally willing to chip in.

“It's nice to see all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes,” Sofia says. “It's been a pleasure to help her work. She's doing a lot. So, you know, any help I can give her.”

Eden counts herself lucky to have them volunteering alongside her.

“I'm just really lucky to be able to do this, for Thompson to be the host in general, and to have the Games and get to know lots of people that I've never interacted with before. To have the Games up and running and being so awesome and to do it with my sisters and my family and have everyone running around the rink, it's added to something that's already been so amazing.”