to Merritt was the first since the cancellation of the Merritt Mountain Music Festival in 2012. The 2015 headliners included Lady Antebellum. Sports Merritt is home to the longest continuously run franchise in the British Columbia Hockey League, the Merritt Centennials. The Cents moved to the Nicola Valley from White Rock midway through the 1973–74 season. The Centennials play all home games at the city-run Nicola Valley Memorial Arena and their season runs from early September through early March. Merritt also hosts the Nicola Valley Pro Rodeo on the Saturday and Sunday of Labour Day weekend every year. Merritt is also home to the Nicola Valley Thunder minor lacrosse club. A round of the Canadian Rally Championship, the Pacific Forest Rally, is held each year in and around Merritt. The international motorsport event is televised on TSN and RDS in Canada, and MotorsTV in Europe. Merritt and the Nicola Valley features two golf courses, the Merritt Golf and Country Club in downtown Merritt and the Quilchena on the Lake Golf Course, located 15 minutes east of the city at historic Quilchena. Merritt features a skateboard park, bike park, and numerous walking trails. Monck Provincial Park is located on the western shore of Nicola Lake, north of Merritt. It offers an abundance of camping, picnicking, swimming, fishing, boating, water-skiing, wind-surfing and hiking. The Merritt Panthers high school teams compete in boys and girls volleyball, basketball, and rugby. There is also a local slo-pitch softball league and the Merritt Otters swim club, which makes its home at the Nicola Valley Aquatic Centre. Media Merritt is home to Q101 Merritt's Music Mix, the Nicola Valley's only local radio station. 101.1 FM, CKMQ-FM is locally owned and an independent radio station. Q101 also reports news and broadcasts the BCHL's Merritt Centennials hockey games. The station was originally launched in 1970 on AM 1230 as CJNL. In 2009, Merritt Broadcasting Ltd. received CRTC approval to convert to the FM band, and the station was relaunched on 101.1 FM on August 31 of that year. Simultaneously, the company's former sister division, NL Broadcasting, received approval to launch a separate rebroadcaster of CHNL, the company's talk radio station in Kamloops, on CJNL's former AM frequency. Merritt has a weekly newspaper, the Merritt Herald, that publishes on Thursdays. Merritt is also served by Shaw TV and by TELUS PureFibre Internet and Optik TV. Demographics In the 2021 Census