Canada Games take quiet peek at region
Look at potential venues for 2021
WATERLOO REGION — One tweet. First, in English. Then, in French.
That’s all the official public recognition the Canada Games sent out Thursday as a technical review crew visited Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph to take a peek at potential venues in the joint local bid to host the 2021 summer games in Ontario.
The tweet showed two photos of the Guelph Rowing Club on Guelph Lake.
“They’ve sent out a tweet for each community they went to,” said Sherry Doiron, manager of the regional sport tourism office for the four cities teaming up in one bid. “It’s like fair play.”
On Monday, the Canada Games sent out a similar tweet from the Walter Baker baseball complex in Ottawa. On Tuesday, a tweet followed from the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara, a proposed volleyball site. On Thursday, the Guelph Rowing Cub got the 140-character shout-out. On Friday, photos from Sudbury are expected to appear on Twitter.
Then all four of the Ontario communities bidding to host in 2021 — Winnipeg tackles the summer games next year — will have been handled in the same social media way.
They will all have received the Silent Tweet-ment.
Emails from The Record sent to Canada Games officials Thursday seeking comment were not immediately answered.
“They asked this site visit be kept under the radar a little bit,” Doiron said of Thursday’s visit by technical officials to Waterloo Region and Guelph.
“This is the group that’s really not into giving the sound bites.”
Doiron would not divulge which venues were on the Canada Games check-it-out list.
“Our bid is a regional bid. We’ve been moving all over the place.”
On Sept. 12, the list of four bidding Ontario communities could be trimmed to three or fewer.
The Canada Games Council is expected to issue a short list of potential hosts for about 3,500 elite young athletes in more than a dozen sports.
“We’ll be given a little bit more feedback in terms of how some of the venues we put on offer were meeting the standards,” Doiron said in a phone interview.
“Right now, we’ve given them several options for the sports, but we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Doiron said.
“We can only guess and hope we’re putting together the best proposal.”
There’s a lot at stake for the bidders.
The 2013 summer games in Sherbrooke generated economic activity of $165 million, the official website says.
The winning host bid from Ontario for 2021 will be announced in March or April.
But the cloud of silence surrounding the local bid will lift as soon as Sept. 12, assuming the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph alliance makes the short list.
“There will definitely be a big rah-rah,” Doiron said.