A Canada Games contingent was in Prince George to help local officials get ready to host the nation in 52 months' time.
Four members of the Canada Games Council, plus president and CEO Sue Hylland, held meetings Thursday with the key volunteers and municipal staff who won the 2015 Canada Winter Games bid for the northern capital. The national body has a number of protocols, strongly developed guidelines, and years of experience to impart to any city that wins the responsibility of hosting either a summer or winter extravaganza.
This trip was to begin the process of setting Prince George up for success. Mayor Dan Rogers, co-chair of the bid committee, called it "a knowledge transfer program" local officials were happy to begin. "We are all still euphoric," and this opens the door to convert that emotion into action by setting up the governance model, enacting the host society, and those initial big steps that will lead to implementing the Games.
"Holding a bit of an orientation session is part of our role," Hylland said. "We try to lead the host society towards game readiness. You are going from one to 6,000 people in four and a half years. We're going to take them through the life cycle and provide some guidance towards that. It doesn't all happen (this far out)."
Rogers said that the host committee "didn't want to lose the emotion, but channel it" from the massive excitement in the public for the Prince George bid. Hylland said part of the national body's job was to explain the best practices for setting up first a volunteer society in the next six months, then arrange a team of volunteer planners (200-400, she estimated) to lead the duty teams, then follow a system that builds everyone logically towards the Games themselves when several thousand volunteers would be needed.
Also on the next six months would be the need for a CEO to be hired to work with the host society and lead planners. There is also a mentorship program set up by which officials from upcoming Games are taken behind the scenes of the Games available between now and then. Prince George organizers would be shown through the winter event in Halifax this February, and also the summer version in Sherbrook in 2013.
