The 2029 Canada Summer Games will be hosted jointly by Moncton and Saint John.
This will be the 32nd edition of the Canada Games.
New Brunswick has hosted the Games twice before, in 1985 in Saint John and in 2003 in Bathurst and Campbellton. The Canada Summer Games to be held this year will be in St. John’s, Nfld.
“It’s an incredible honour and especially for our young athletes. It has been a year of research and planning. We very much hope the 2029 Games will become a milestone moment for our inspiring athletes, our coaches and families from every part of New Brunswick and all across Canada. If we want our kids to have dreams to compete nationally and on the world stage, we need to give them the opportunity to do so home to get there, and I think this is very much what we are doing,” says Bid Co-Chair Louis Leger.
The event features two weeks of competition, between 16 and 20 sports, about 4,600 participants including athletes, coaches and managers, and more than 5,000 volunteers.
“The Games give youth lessons in life, promotes mental health and teaches them how to win and lose. Those are things that will be lasting.” Leger adds.
Premier Susan Holt expressed the value of the upcoming Games, as having an economic impact of up to $57 million for the province, “To prepare our athletes, to invest in their development, to make sure the infrastructure is in place, to create the plans to welcome people and make sure that we leave them with a lasting experience they will never forget about the most beautiful province in this country.”
Some of the long term benefits of the Summer Games include:
- The ability to leverage significant investments by accessing funding from federal and provincial governments, as well as financial support from private and corporate donations.
- New and/or improved community infrastructure that supports sport, health and wellness.
- Increased media exposure locally, regionally and nationally.
- A new base of community volunteers with training to host major events.
- A legacy of community pride.
“It’s an exciting proposition and it’s a long road, but we have a lot of good things that are going to happen,” Bid Co-Chair Bill MacMackin says.
“Initially we came together to see how this could work as a joint initiative between the Moncton region, Saint John region and Fundy region and how is this going to work. But we came away from the February evaluation visit, feeling genuinely like one team, feeling like this was a unique opportunity to bring these communities together to host this event but also build on it for future events. We see this as a starting point, and we are going to deliver this for New Brunswick in a way that is going to set an example for future games.”
