A question will come with the Queen’s Baton relay when it stops in Victoria on Monday as part of its 230,000-kilometre, 388-day trek through 71 nations and territories to the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, Australia.
Victoria is bidding for the following Commonwealth Games, so the question is: Will the baton’s final destination in 2022 be the B.C. capital?
The perceived frontrunners for 2022, Liverpool and Birmingham in England, will have a say in that eventual outcome. But it gives the Victoria visit of the baton a topical immediacy.
“We are working flat-out on the 2022 Games bid,” said Victoria bid committee chairman David Black.
“The [governing] Commonwealth Games Federation is being tough-nosed about it, and good for them, because that’s the way it should be.”
Black said the announcement, regarding proposed venues, funding sources and overall budget, is tentatively scheduled for the second week of August.
“We are planning on major legacies for sport and housing,” he said.
Officials from the federation will be in Victoria on Aug. 8-9 to inspect sites and overlook Victoria’s plans.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said having the baton come through the city on Monday is “a stroke of luck … and inspiration.”
“[The committee] is still working on the bid. There are lots of logistics to work out,” Helps said.
“It all comes down to making the business case.”
The bid book must be completed and submitted to the London-based federation by Sept. 30. The federation is expected to announce the 2022 host city in November.
It is not a normal bid process, but a replacement situation following the withdrawal from the 2022 Games by original host Durban after the South African organizers were unable to meet scheduled financial obligations.
The Canadian leg of the 2018 Queen’s Baton relay encompasses visits to the four previous Games host cities from this country.
Hamilton, Ont., hosted the inaugural Commonwealth Games in 1930, Vancouver in 1954, Edmonton in 1978 and Victoria in 1994.
Along its Canadian route, the baton was present at the B.C. Lions versus Edmonton Eskimos CFL game on Friday at Commonwealth Stadium in the Alberta capital and will be carried to the top of the B.C. Place Stadium roof in Vancouver on Tuesday.
The public portion of the baton relay festivities in Victoria on Monday will begin at 12:20 p.m. with Helps riding with it on her bike from City Hall, up Pandora Avenue to Vancouver Street.
“I will have a device strapped to my bike, to which the baton will be affixed, so I can have both hands on the handle bars, as I should,” Helps said.
Helps will hand the baton to Bruce Deacon. The former Commonwealth Games runner and two-time Olympian will run it to the Frontrunners store and hand it to Liam Stanley, who Deacon coached to a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
Stanley will run it along Vancouver Street to Rockland Avenue, where he will hand to Ravi Kahlon, the Delta North MLA and Victoria-born and raised field-hockey international who played in two Olympics and two Commonwealth Games, and is now the parliamentary secretary for sport in the NDP government.
Kahlon will run along Rockland Avenue to Moss Street and hand the baton to former Commonwealth Games swimmer and triathlete Suzanne Weckend. The final hand-off occurs when Weckend delivers the baton to B.C. Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon outside Government House.
Spectators are welcome along the relay route.
Hundreds of summer-camp children from the region take part in sporting activities on the Government House back lawn and will be able to pass the baton among themselves
The Queen’s Baton is the Commonwealth Games equivalent to the Olympic torch.
A baton is specially fabricated for each Games by the host country.
The 2018 baton is made on one side of macadamia wood, important historically to the ancestral peoples of the Gold Coast, and on the other side of recycled plastic debris hauled from Gold Coast waterways.
Its peculiar loop design is to represent sustainability and the “boundless energy” of the Gold Coast.
Helps said she likes the “diversity and inclusiveness” the 2018 baton represents.
The Queen placed a message in the hollow baton on March 13 at Buckingham Palace.
It is being relayed throughout the Commonwealth before the baton is opened and the message read by Prince Charles during the opening ceremonies in the Gold Coast on April 4 next year.
