Made in B.C. — for champions
Each podium used in the Victory Ceremonies was assembled from more than 200 wooden pieces.
British Columbia wood will share the spotlight with the world’s best athletes, thanks to 23 stunning podiums built from timber donated by communities, First Nations, and businesses from across the province.
These made-in-B.C. podiums will be on display during the nightly Victory Ceremonies throughout the Vancouver 2010 Oylmpic and Paralympic Winter Games.
Each podium is built from one of 18 different wood types. The wood for each podium was harvested from a specific area or community, which makes it easy to link the specific podiums to the people and communities that provided the wood.
For example, the podium that will be used at Whistler Creekside for Alpine Skiing events is built from Western Red Cedar harvested in the Revelstoke Community Forest.
- UPDATE: Six Communities Thanked for Olympic Podiums and Spirit. [BC Government news release - Sept. 29, 2010]
There ‘s a terrific series of 24 fact sheets online. One of them gives you an overview of the wood podium program. The other 23 feature stories and pictures about each podium and:
• the wood used;
• the community where the material came from;
• the area forests, timber companies and other harvesters; and
• quotes from community leaders, entrepreneurs and officials.
You can download these PDFs from the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range website.
Facts and figures
The story of the 2010 Games podiums:
• 23 wood podiums will be at 11 venues to support individual and team victory ceremonies.
• 13 podiums were built from wood donated by community forests, two from family run woodlots, two from cities, six from businesses, and five from First Nations.
• The podiums range from 480cm to 1525 cm in length, 170 to 500 cm in depth and 30 to 60 cm in height.
• The lightest podium, built of Western Red Cedar, weighs approximately 200 kilograms.
• Each podium is assembled from more than 200 wooden pieces.
• The wood was harvested near communities as small as a few hundred (Cheslatta Carrier Nation) to cities with more than 80,000 residents (Kamloops), as far north as Fort St. James to Clayquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island and from as far south and east as the Ktunaxa Nation near Cranbrook.
• British Columbia’s Ministry of Forests and Range sourced the wood and co-ordinated podium production.
• The rough lumber was converted to panels at Metro Vancouver’s Bayview Millworks, a high-end wood product manufacturer and distributor.
• The panels were cut into complex shapes using sophisticated computer controlled machinery at the University of British Columbia's state-of-the-art Centre for Advanced Wood Processing.
• The podiums were assembled at Canadian hardware retail leader RONA’s Vancouver 2010 Fabrication Shop, a community-based training centre that teaches carpentry skills to new Canadians and at-risk youth.
On display every night
For the Vancouver-based competitions, the Victory Ceremonies for figure skating, hockey and curling will take place in the competition venue. Depending on the sport and schedule, Victory Ceremonies for other sports will be presented either at BC Place at night or in the venue immediately following the competition.
In Whistler, Victory Ceremonies for all Whistler-based Olympic sports will be presented at Whistler Medals Plaza, with the exception of the men’s 50-kilometre cross-country skiing competition on February 28, which will be awarded in BC Place as part of the Closing Ceremony.
The wood podiums highlight the importance of forestry in British Columbia. The province is a global leader in sustainable forest management and the world’s largest exporter of softwood lumber, paper and bio-energy products that help mitigate climate change and provide innovative solutions to green building and energy needs.
