Official Projects
Canada Winter Games
The Canada Games is a multi-sport event, for young Canadian athletes, held every two years in various communities across Canada. Athletes represent their provinces and territories, and the Games alternate between Summer and Winter Games. The motto of the Games is ‘Unity through Sport’ and they were introduced as an official Centennial project in an attempt to use a pan-Canadian sport event to promote national unity. The first Canada Games was a Winter Games, held in Québec City in 1967.
Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo
The Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo was a major Centennial project with 150 performances given in over 40 cities across Canada. The theme of the Tattoo was Canada’s military history from 1665 to 1967. The Tattoo is included here because it included many different kinds of physical activity such as training exercises, obstacle races, marching bands and precision marching.
Centennial Athletic Awards
The Centennial Athletic Awards were introduced by the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (CAHPER), and sponsored by the Centennial Commission. The Awards were competitive, and used sport-related fitness tests to encourage and measure youth fitness. They were the first Canada wide fitness programme during peace time, and the first to include both boys and girls.
Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant
The Centennial Voyageur Canoe Pageant was an official Centennial event. It involved a canoe race, from Rocky Mountain House in Alberta to Expo ’67 in Montréal. The race involved 10 canoes, each having 10 paddlers, and representing eight provinces and the two territories (only Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador were not involved). The pageant/race was over 6,000 kms. and followed the Indigenous canoe routes and portages that had been used by settler explorers and fur traders.
Expo’ 67
The World’s Fair held in Montréal during Canada’s Centennial was formally known as the 1967 International and Universal Exposition (Expo ’67). It was the largest official project in celebration of the Centennial, and it is included here not only because there were various physical activity events and demonstrations as part of the Expo programme (e.g., folk dancing, water skiing), and that the event left a legacy of recreational infrastructure for Montréal, but also because a number of Canadians made their journey to Expo into a Centennial project (e.g., hitch hiking, roller skating, canoeing).
PanAmerican Games
The 5th PanAmerican Games were held in Winnipeg, and hosting the Games was recognized by the federal government as an official Centennial project. As with the Canada Games, hosting the PanAmerican Games was part of a broader initiative to involve sport in national unity initiatives. Associated with the PanAmerican Games was the first major disability sport event in Canada, the PanAmerican Wheelchair Games. [The opening torch relay will be addressed in more detail in the section on Torch Relays.]
Second Century Week/ Olympiad '67
Second Century Week is often referred to as the third largest official Centennial project, after Expo and the PanAmerican Games. The event was a major forum for students from across Canada to debate topics of concern as Canada entered its second century. It was held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Allied to the event were national championship tournaments and competitions for interuniversity sports, referred to as Olympiad ’67, with events held in Edmonton, Calgary and Banff.
