Booming Edmonton prepares for Commonwealth Games

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33932, 27 August 1975, Page 12

Booming Edmonton prepares for Commonwealth Games

'By

RON ATKIN)

EDMONTON'. Canada's big cities are separated by a good deal more than miles of empty countryside. Provincial and ethnic rivalries and jealousies have traditionally stretched the fabric of the country’s unity, and these days it could be argued that Vancouver. on the Pacific coast, has more in common with Tokyo than with Halifax on the Atlantic shore. But in Edmonton, burgeoning capital of the Rocky Mountain province of Alberta, the telescopes are trained on Montreal, 2000 miles to the east. Montreal, site of next year's Olympic Games, has problems of organisation, finance and just about everything else. Edmonton, which will stage the 11th Commonwealth Games in three years’ time, is anxious that the plague should not spread west. Edmonton’s mam problem. as it peers towards 1978, is one caused by the sheer affluence of the place. Alberta. Canada's most prosperious province, ' is rich tn oil. cattle, coal and timber. Unemployment, at three per cent, is the nation’s lowest. Construction workers are the lords of this sellers' market, and there simply might not be enough of them to build Edmonton’s Gantts facilities. Those willing to suffer extremes of temperature for a salary of more than $lOOO a week are busy on the Alaska oil pipeline. The assembling of a huge oil extraction plant at Fort McMurray, 275 miles north-east of Edmonton, has siphoned a labour force of 9000 — and the work will not be finished until 1979. Another vast project is a 1500 mile pipeline from

Edmonton to the Arctic Ocean. “If it gets under way before 1978, we will have a real problem,” said Dr Maury van Vliet, President of the Commonwealth Games Foundation. Dr Van Vdet, who has given up his post as Dean of Physical Education at the University of Alberta to devote himself full time (for an annua! $39,000) to the Games, added: “Here an unskilled labourer can make more than $l4 an hour and the sort of money they are paying up north will draw away many of our best construction people. A labour shortage or a strike — and in this respect Canada's record is poor — could make our position very tight indeed.” The remorseless escalation of building costs is another threat to Edmonton’s budget of $37 million — to be contributed in equal parts by the city, the province and' the Canadian Government. Mr Ron Ferguson, planning coordinator for the antes, is already faced with a monthly increase of 1« per cent. “Every day w'e delay costs us $10,000.” he said. “1 had a chart in my office which told me how much we were losing every second, but in the end I had to take it down.” Though the splendidly equipped University of Alberta will be convened into the athletes’ village and existing sites will accommodate many of the events, Edmonton has to build an athletics stadium, a pool, practice track, cycling velodrome and bowling green. The stadium, costing $2l million is the biggest item and the biggest headache. The 48-acre site, little more than a mile from the city centre, lies alongside the present, inadequate ground used by the Edmonton Eskimos, a professional gridiron football team. The new 45,000-seat arena is planned as a total recreation facility, like

Edinburgh’s Meadowbank, but its main after-Games use will be as a new’ home for the Eskimos, which has upset many residents of the area. Canadian football does not suffer the vicious hooliganism associated with the British professional game, and the main complaints of the anti-sta-dium group, Action Edmonton, are concerned with things like unsightliness, noise, parking nuisances and empty beer bottles in the residents’ rose beds. A recent plebiscite brought a 77 per cent “yes” vote in favour of the site, but in deference to complaints it will be a sunken stadium, like the Parc des Princes in Paris. Building a ground w’hich will be narrow enough (285 ft for the demands of football and w'ide enough (400 ft for athletics has meant that a final design has not yet

been approved. “We hope to break ground in September, but it may be a pious hope,” warned Dr van Vliet. “A city of half-a-million obviously needs a major stadium. These Games have provided an

opportunity for us to get one for very little direct cost, but the people must recognise that it has to be all-purpose.” Or, as Mr Ferguson put it: “We have turned our priorities around. While we are fully aware of our Games "commitments, our first consideration is to concieve the stadium to house professional football.” Meanwhile the fund-rais-ing gathers pace, with bingo sessions, special 100dollar a plate dinners (a recent one was attended by the 1954 Vancouver Mile heroes, Bannister and Landy) and lotteries which are a guaranteed source of big revenue in an easymoney, gambling-mad city. “We’ve got guys in this town w’ho w’ill bet on the colour of the next car to come around the corner,” said a Games official. According to Dr van Vliet: “We have already made enough to stop borrowing from the bank, although we are still in what we call our shakedown period.” The phrase is an apt

one, since he is the third president of the fledgling Games Foundation. The first, Mayor Ivor Dent, resigned when he'lost a recent election. He was succeeded by an aiderman, Alex Fallow, who stepped down when he found the work too demanding of his time.

Somehow it did not sound conceited when Dr van Vliet, a friendly, open, sincere man, described himself as “the logical choice” for the presidency. Though he will be 65 on the opening day of the Games, on August 3, 1978, he is still an active runner and swimmer. “1 am thrilled with the opportunity at this stage of my life to shift gears,” he said. “I have been 30 years at the University of Alberta and 40 years in physical education in Western Canada. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that after 40 years I have made my contribution.”

His remaining ambition is to make Edmonton a world-known name in sport. “In some respects our geographical location is similar to Christchurch. To many people in the Commonwealth we are a long way from anywhere.” But it will not be for much longer if he and his working committee can help it. One of them refused the offer of a drink with the comment: “I gave up four months ago and I shan't take another until the day after the Games are over.” In Edmonton the Xll h Commonwealth Games are being taken that seriously.