Winnipeg visit boosts confidence for local Games team
After watching the Canada Summer Games unfold in Winnipeg, Doug Hamilton is looking ahead to 2021 with renewed confidence.
“Comfortable is a good word for it,” said Hamilton, who was recently appointed as chairman of the 2021 Canada Summer Games Host Society’s board of directors after leading Niagara’s successful bid to host the Games in 2021. After four days in Winnipeg, watching the Games get underway in Manitoba’s capital city, Hamilton returned to Niagara earlier this week with “an understanding that this truly is a franchise and they have a framework, a recipe or a template that you can follow.”
While there’s still room to incorporate local ideas and ensure Niagara’s unique attributes stand out when the national multi-sport events take place here, Hamilton said “as long as we follow the template — which of course we will — we will be able to carry it off successfully.”
That template was perfected in the 50 years since the first Canada Summer Games took place in Quebec City in 1967.
While Hamilton was part of a team of four Niagara representatives during the trip primarily to watch the opening ceremonies on July 28, he said a second team of two Niagara games representatives — Tom Arkell, Brock University’s special adviser to the vice-president, and David Veres, Niagara College’s soon-toretire associate vice-president of academic and learner services — also participated in an “observer program” for communities hosting the next two Games.
“It’s called a transfer-of-knowledge program,” Hamilton said. “They spend four or five days doing seminars, venue tours, village tours and that kind of stuff so they can better inform the next two Games.”
Hamilton said there was a large contingent of representatives from Red Deer, which will host the 2019 Canada Summer Games, participating in the observer program. And when the Games take place in Alberta, he said it will be Niagara’s turn to send a large group of representatives.
Hamilton said his visit to Winnipeg also strengthened his resolve that some changes Niagara is planning for the local events won’t hinder its success.
For instance, he said Niagara is planning to hold its opening ceremonies at Meridian Centre, although most communities use outdoor stadiums for those events.
Winnipeg, however, had its opening ceremony in the city’s hockey arena, “and they did a really good job.”
“It gave us encouragement that an opening ceremony can work well in an indoor facility,” Hamilton said.
There is, however, one major difference between Meridian Centre and Winnipeg’s arena.
“Their arena has 15,000 seats. We’re going to be doing it in an arena with 6,000 seats,” he said.
Nevertheless, Hamilton remains confident the local arena will be large enough to accommodate crowds by using floor space as well as the seating.
Niagara’s next steps towards hosting the Games include hiring a chief executive officer for the host society. The board of directors is set to issue a request for proposals looking for a firm to recruit the organization’s new boss by this fall.