2010 Torch Relay Route Announced

By Bob Mackin, 24 HOURS, Nov 21, 2008

WEST VANCOUVER: The Olympic torch relay will begin its Canadian journey in Victoria on Oct. 30, 2009 at Mile 0 of the Trans-Canada Highway, within sight of Washington State’s Olympic Mountains.

It will end 45,000 kilometres and 106 days later at B.C. Place Stadium for the Feb. 12, 2010 opening ceremony of the XXI Olympic Winter Games.

VANOC CEO John Furlong, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and federal sport secretary Gary Lunn unveiled the route at Key Meek Centre on Friday. VANOC budgeted $30 million and the federal government announced $25 million last February. Most of the 12,000 torchbearers will be chosen via contests run by co-sponsors Coca-Cola and RBC.

The traditional lighting ceremony in the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece will happen in late October and the flame will be transported by air to Canada in a secure canister.

The relay will cover Canada’s extremes: Point Pelee, Ont., to the south, Cape Spear, Nfld., to the east, Old Crow, Yukon to the west and the Canadian Forces station at Alert, Nunavut, the world’s most northerly settlement.

The coast-to-coast-to-coast route in the world’s second largest country includes 1,020 “communities and places of interest,” 115 aboriginal settlements and 14 Canadian Forces bases and stations. One hundred modes of transportation will be used along a route that will be within an hour’s driving distance for an estimated 90% of Canada’s 32 million people.

Olympic host province British Columbia gets the torch for 27 days and 9,570 km. It will visit 256 communities and places of interest and 50 aboriginal settlements. Some 3,500 torchbearers will cover 1,150 km.

B.C.'s Kootenay Pass, at 1,770 metres, will be the highest point of the relay. It will stop at Craigellachie, B.C., where the last spike was driven in the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. The relay includes a BC Ferry cruise from Prince Rupert on the north coast to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. The procession enters Whistler on Feb. 5, a week before the opening ceremony, and will also be paraded through Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations reserves for three days. The Vancouver route will include the Lions Gate Bridge and Stanley Park.

A team of 40 VANOC employees is planning the relay, which will be produced by a traveling crew of 200. Precise times and routes will be announced closer to the relay. The flame will be transported between most communities by car, ferry or plane.

The ancient Olympic flame ritual was revived for Amsterdam 1928, but the first modern relay from Olympia to an Olympic stadium was held for Berlin 1936 under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.