Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

A legacy of our own

Farewell, 2015 Canada Winter Games athletes, coaches, officials and visitors.

Farewell, 2015 Canada Winter Games athletes, coaches, officials and visitors.

It was our pleasure to host you in our city for two weeks and we hope we've left you with positive, lifelong memories of exciting competition, excellent facilities and fantastic people.

For Prince George residents heading into the city's second century, the question Monday morning is about the legacy the Games have left Prince George. Is the city better off having hosted the Games and if so, how?

The legacy of the Canada Winter Games for Prince George won't make itself. Rather, Prince George residents have to now go out and create it for themselves. If citizens think they can put their feet up and prepare for that legacy thing to arrive, that will be a long and frustrating wait for a future that will never arrive.

Instead, Prince George needs to use the momentum from the Games to go seek future opportunities and turn this city into the "Northern Capital" it has long believed it is. If Prince George longs to be the Edmonton to Vancouver's Calgary, it had better get busy.

So what's next?

The opportunities are many, even to look at just sports and special events. Tim Hortons Brier. Memorial Cup. World championships in hockey and curling. World Police and Fire Games. National and international level competitions in cross-country skiing, biathlon, short-track speed skating and snowboarding.

Why not the Juno Awards or the Canadian Screen Awards? And while we're at it, how about the Canada Summer Games?

All of those options are either one-in-a-lifetime or irregular events.

What about community enhancements that build on the Games legacy and create new legacies of their own?

How about an ice plant for the Outdoor Ice Oval, so that facility would not be at the mercy of the weather when staging major competitions?

How about a partnership between the City of Prince George and UNBC to replace Four Seasons Pool with a new aquatic facility next to the Northern Sport Centre?

How about a new City Hall?

How about a new, modern building to replace the concrete oil derrick that is the downtown branch of the Prince George Public Library?

How about a performing arts centre complex that includes a new home for the library, the Community Arts Council, Studio 2880 and the Playhouse, all under one roof as the late Paul Zanette envisioned it?

Any and all of those options require Prince George to not sit still but to charge forward with ambition, building itself up for future opportunities, future growth and future residents. Like all investments, it requires putting dollars on the table and the risk of making mistakes. Most of all, it's a bet on the future and that's a bet worth taking.

Paving potholes, clearing snow-covered roads and mowing the lawns in city parks is essential but it is living in the moment. The question about what is the legacy of the Games is timed perfectly with Prince George's 100th anniversary next Friday. The story that Prince George writes itself for the next 100 years is the answer to that legacy question.

Instead of taking a wait-and-see approach, Prince George needs to seize the moment. Now is not the time for rest and reflection or admiring ourselves for a job well done. Now is the time to reach higher, do more, be more, accomplish the impossible and silence the naysayers.

Fortunately, the strategy going forward for Prince George and its residents is right there in the motto of the 2015 Games:

Choose Your Path.

Leave Your Tracks.

Journey With Us.

It's a pledge to those of us already here to work together to make our mark and to create a wonderful future for our children and grandchildren and it's an invitation to the rest of the province, the country and the world to come to Prince George, to be part of the incredible story to come.

The legacy for Prince George from the 2015 Canada Winter Games is a blank page.

We'd better get busy dreaming, planning and doing.

Nobody's going to do any of that work for us.