The original concept for the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games called for the opening ceremony to be held in the Inner Harbour on floating barges with bleachers
PARIS — Plans to stage the opening ceremonies for the 2024 Olympics on the Seine River — the first-ever held outside a stadium — may conjure memories of similar plans to hold a floating opening ceremony for a major event in Victoria three decades ago.
In the end, the Victoria Games opening ceremony was held at Centennial Stadium on the University of Victoria campus before a crowd of 35,000, including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. “It caught people’s imaginations at the time,” said Williams. “It would have been fabulous for Victoria, which I have always envisioned as the Prague of the Pacific. I will watch with interest how Paris uses the Seine for its opening ceremony Friday.”
Chris Gower, who was junior architect for the Victoria Inner Harbour opening-ceremony concept under Williams, and later worked on the Centennial Stadium temporary expansion for the Games, said while the floating ceremony never happened in Victoria, it “showed we don’t think like a provincial backwater.”
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