There were a few bumps along the way but the City of Quesnel has now submitted a bid to host the 2024 BC Winter Games.
Mayor Bob Simpson has confirmed that they now have the necessary letters of support from the School District partners that were originally holding out.
He says the city gave advance notice to the main partners that they were putting a bid in, but he says they ended up needing more time to work some things out with those secondary partner groups…
“We needed some early resolutions from the Cariboo Regional District, from the School District, but it was the secondary partners that weren’t necessarily brought along on that longer time frame, so we were fortunate that the BC Games gave us an extension, gave that little bit more room for those partners to be able to work through some of the issues associated with supporting the bid.”Simpson says there is no blame, it was just a hiccup along the way.
“There is a bit of lack of clarity, and I think quite frankly it’s on us as the host organization to maybe spend a little bit more time understanding what some of those implications are, so I don’t think there is any place to point blame in this.  I think you described it correctly that it was a bit of a hiccup in the process, and we were fortunate the BC Games gave us an extension to address those concerns so that we were able to put a full bid package in.”
Simpson says the primary concern was that some of their members would lose out on a couple of days pay because the schools have to close in order to host the games.
Originally, there wasn’t enough time to iron out those details.
Simpson says now it is a waiting game to see if they are successful, but he says he feels pretty good about it.
“As a community in the north with the amenities that we’ve got, with the partnerships to the north and south of us that we’ve got, we’re in a pretty good position to put that bid in, and of course as people will know we hosted a winter games in the past when we did have the strength of the amenities and venues that we do now.”
Simpson says hosting events like this is in line with Council’s desire to make Quesnel a host city.
