Castlegar, Trail, Nelson and the surrounding area are going to very busy when the B.C. Senior Games come to town Aug. 16-20. With more than 3,200 athletes involved, the logistics of such matters as accommodations can seem overwhelming.
Taking care of housing all the visiting competitors in Castlegar is the accommodation committee led by chair Pam McLeod.
"We've been working on this for a year," said McLeod. "About eight months ago we started fielding hundreds of phone calls trying to find accommodations for all the athletes coming through. You can imagine what that posed for each each community looking at at least 1,100 athletes per community to try and find accommodation. You know some of them will camp and some will stay in bed-and-breakfasts and some people have opened up their homes to be able to provide support for the games. As it stands right now, we are pretty much booked solid for the region."
The senior games coming in the middle of August during an already busy tourist season provided extra challenges for the B.C. Senior Games accommodation committee.
"We had to really look outside the box to see how we were going to accomplish housing all those visitors," said McLeod, "and we have. We've been able to provide the accommodations for everybody."