By Adam K. Johnson Territories spend millions at Vancouver 2010 The North is sending hundreds of politicians, civil servants, artists and businesspeople to Vancouver in February, betting millions of dollars that it can get the world’s attention during the 2010 Winter Olympics. For many, it’s the junket of all junkets, but what’s the expected payoff?

You could call it an invasion. Hundreds of people from Canada’s three territories will charge into Vancouver next month, flags raised, to make the 2010 Vancouver Olympics their own. They’ll try to tame a monster: an estimated 250,000 attendees on-site each day; 13,000 media; three billion people watching around the globe; billions of dollars changing hands over two weeks of celebration and competition. The North wants a piece.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote and increase awareness of the North, especially since the Olympics are taking place basically in our backyard,” says Bob McLeod, the NWT’s Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, whose government is willing to bet $2.44-million. “We’ll get a much bigger bang for our buck doing this while the Olympics are on.”

The dollar signs don’t end there. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest co-ordinated efforts Canada’s three territories have ever undertaken. Each is spending millions in transportation, housing and other costs to make it happen – $2.6-million for the Yukon and $2-million for Nunavut. The largest aboriginal organizations in the region are spending millions more, and the North will be everywhere: at a central “Northern House” in downtown Vancouver; at galleries and performance spaces around the Lower Mainland; at aboriginal and business events; in schools giving workshops; and featured in international broadcasts for three straight nights to mark medal celebrations at B.C. Place.

And they all have a single goal: get the world’s attention.

“When you have an international audience and some of the most powerful business and political leaders in the world in attendance, you have an incredible opportunity to build partnerships,” says Taleeb Noormohamed, vice-president for corporate strategies and partner relations with the Vancouver Organizing Committee. Noormohamed is responsible for bringing the territories into the fold through the “Contributing Province/Territory Program” – at the price of a cool $500,000, split between the three territories.

“We’re very pleased that virtually every province and territory has come on board [New Brunswick is the only hold-out],” says Noormohamed. “The contribution of each of these provinces and territories is hugely important to the success of these Games. [They are] helping to create a platform for the entire world to see the diversity of Canada and actually get a sense of the majesty of this county.”

This diversity will be on display each day of the medal celebrations at B.C. Place. As part of the cost of entry, each province and territory gets its own day at the medal ceremonies, including a 30-minute performance piece to be broadcast worldwide. The territories have each spent months honing their pieces into “Canada’s Northern Weekend,” (February 19 (NWT), 20 (Yukon) and 21 (Nunavut)) which they hope will help the world develop a taste for the North.

According to Lynn Elkin, the choreographer for both the NWT and Nunavut performances, each will focus on the hybrid elements that make Northern art unique in the 21st century: break dancing and acrobatics meld with Arctic sports for Nunavut; traditional drumming and Dene Games meet country fiddling and modern blues-rock for the NWT. Elkin says it’s representative of the sort of collaboration that pops up everywhere in the North. “That happens in every community in the territory,” the Yellowknife-based, Nunavut-raised choreographer says with a laugh. “’We know you play country, but could you try this?’”
For Pierre Germain, director of tourism with the Yukon government, these performances are among the first words in a “story of the North,” a tale the Northern contingent hopes will grab Olympic visitors and viewers, drawing eyes, ears and wallets northward. To build this story, Germain says the Yukon government will focus on the 10,000 accredited and 3,000 non-accredited media expected to be at the Games. The goal is to build on Yukon’s tourism industry, both abroad and at home.

“For us, [the story of the North] really focuses around the North coming of age and being a great place to live in terms of quality of life, as a great place to start a career, as a travel destination,” he says. “All three territories have strong and unique brands,” highlighted by pristine, untouched land and vibrant aboriginal cultures.

But the Northern First Nations aren’t leaving their representation up to the territorial governments. The Yukon First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and the Dene Nation are all partnering with the four host First Nations in Vancouver – which in turn will liaise with VANOC, bringing aboriginal culture, business and youth into the Olympic fold. The YFN alone is spending $1.2-million to get the word out about the North at these Games. According to Patti Balsillie, director of marketing for the project, the YFN is hoping to make an impact with a series of cultural performances, called What the Land Remembers, among its other initiatives. “It’s capital ‘C’ crazy,” she says of the show thus far. But that’s the whole point. “If we don’t stand out, we’re going to miss this opportunity,” she says. “[We want] people leaving and telling two friends, ‘Oh, you’ve got to see the Yukon First Nations show.’”

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, meanwhile, is bringing performing artists from Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut and the Inuvialuit region of the NWT, says executive director Mary Simon. These artists will perform at the Aboriginal Pavilion and many other places around the Games. ITK has also secured opportunities for Inuit artists to sell their works at the Games’ Artisan Village and Business Showcase. CONTINUED...

We want people to discover who Inuit are as a distinct Aboriginal People in Canada and share our history and modern developments,” Simon wrote in an email. ITK did not disclose its budget for the Olympics by the time this magazine went to press.

These approaches – through aboriginal, government and private interests – will come together in a single base of operations for all three territories: Northern House. Pierre Germain says it’s the funnel that the North’s performances and advertising campaigns are built for. “You will see advertisements – traditional and online – and hear about it [through] guerrilla activities, which I’m not going to tell you about right now,” he says. “All of these will serve to push you towards Canada’s Northern House.”

In the pre-Olympic maelstrom of non-stop construction and re-construction, 602 West Hastings Street in downtown Vancouver doesn’t look like much – just another contemporary office building on a street packed with them. But during its December 8 to March 31 run as Northern House, organizers hope to establish a haven of Northern culture in the heart of a spit-polished Western metropolis: a multi-level building filled with music, dance, arts, commerce, multimedia displays and all the information a visitor could want on the North.

“The theme of Northern House is ‘Live, Visit, and Invest,’ and the displays, personalities and information available will reflect that theme,” says Ryan Oliver, a senior advisor with Nunavut’s Department of Economic Development and Transportation, in an email. Curiosities on-site include a massive inukshuk assembled by former Nunavut commissioner Peter Irniq using stone from Nunavut, British Columbia and the NWT, and simulated northern lights pulsing behind the building’s windows.

Oliver says he and other organizers expect hundreds of thousands of visitors to walk through the doors, and given its location – perched in a major shopping district with two mass transit lines just blocks away – they might just get them. The next challenge is turning these visitors and all of this newfound attention into dollars. At Northern House, Oliver says the Nunavut government will use the influx of people to run market surveys to “help gauge the experience that potential tourists are looking for.” A shared retail space will sell northern arts and crafts and a series of seminars, receptions and displays will sell visitors on the North as a tourist locale, a filming location, a business investment and a great place to work.

Further, all three territories are working through the business world to make sure they get the most “bang for their buck” out of these Games. Nunavut has entered a deal with the city of West Vancouver to meet with its sizable number of junior mining companies and create a tourism presence in the city – going so far as to bring West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones to Iqaluit and Pangnirtung earlier this year. The Yukon and Nunavut are also attending and throwing business conferences.

“We certainly want to show the rest of Canada what Nunavut is all about and we’re looking forward to doing some business there,” says Bob Long, deputy minister with the Department of Economic Development and Transportation.

Will it work, though? Rising costs and disappointing economic payoffs (to date) have scratched some of the sheen off the 2010 Games for Vancouverites. The economic windfall of Olympic Games has been a crapshoot for their host cities. How this will trickle-down to those cities’ partners is even less clear. But the consensus seems to be that it can’t hurt. There has been little dissent when it comes to the North’s Olympic plans, little shouting on the floor of the requisite legislative assemblies, and not much more hand wringing in local newspaper editorials. And even in a recession, tourism experts often encourage stronger promotional pushes, especially into new and novel territory.

“You don’t want to cut back on marketing in bad times; you need it as much as ever,” says Beth Walters, CEO of Toronto-based tourism experts PKF Consulting. “Obviously, you should be looking and searching for effective ways of marketing, new ways of marketing that might be more efficient.”

In a way, it’s Marketing 101. If new markets don’t know your product exists, how can they invest in it? Of course, it never hurts when you believe your product is awesome. For devoted residents, selling the North is second nature.

“In my regular life, when I go down south, most of my conversations are about how cool life is up here,” says Christine “Lil’ Bear” Lamothe, Iqaluit-based leader of Nunavut break-dance troupe Kaiva. She and two of her dancers from Clyde River will join the Nunavut medal performance. “It’s just a wondrous place on earth that I feel really privileged to be a part of.” CONTINUED...

If I can share that in some way onstage...,” she says, trailing off. “I want people to walk away thinking, ‘Oh wow, Nunavut is so much fun.’”
Even if there is a major boon to Northern economies, the benefits may be slow to develop and hard to measure. Minister McLeod says the NWT will monitor tourism numbers and spikes in employment inquiries. The Yukon Government will be reading the news – they use a tracking service to monitor articles about the Yukon and the North; the more articles, the more successful they were at getting the word out. “We’ll be reporting on these outcomes by the fall of next year,” Germain says.

For Nunavut, most of the same metrics apply, but they’ll have to squeeze in some time to count money as well. The Nunavut Inuksuit program, which sold custom souvenir inuksuit (plural of inukshuk) by Nunavut artists, has already brought in $300,000 to the home communities and an untold boost to these artists’ profiles.

“Nunavut is preparing to showcase itself as a place to invest and visit. We are doing this by showing what Nunavut has to offer both culturally and economically,” Oliver wrote. “The impact of this will be felt over the next five to 10 years.”

Laurel Parry, arts manager with the Yukon government, said it’s these sorts of programs that can make all the difference to artists. “Olympics come and go,” she says. “What stays are the experiences of having a Yukon artist in Vancouver.” Parry uses the example of a singer-songwriter at a music festival. “Whoever sees them gets used to the fact that we have a whole bunch of talent up here and they can fold them into their normal programming.”

Parry said the artists and performers she’s talked to are “stoked,” an excitement that can’t help but be a little contagious. For some performers, such as Yellowknife hip-hop star Aaron “Godson” Hernandez, this is an opportunity unlikely to be repeated. He says he’s thrilled to represent his home and country (and to maybe get a shot at watching Canada win gold in hockey).

“[This will] probably be the biggest thing I’ll ever do,” says Hernandez. “If I have to call it a career after this, I’ll be happy.”

Adam Johnson is a Vancouver-based writer and photographer. He does not yet have a ticket to a gold medal hockey game.