Celebration begins

Newspaper Name: Calgary Herald

Province: Alberta
Town(s) Served: Calgary and southern Alberta
Published: 02/13/1988
View PDF

There’s probably no bigger world stage than that of the Olympics Games and it was Calgary’s turn to stand in the spotlight in 1988. The city hosted the Winter Games and the Calgary Herald’s story on the opening ceremonies put it into perspective: “But for about two billion people, more than one-third of the world’s population stretching from Manhattan to Mongolia, the weather doesn’t really matter – they’ll see the best OCO’88 can throw at them…”
Organizers were expecting the biggest crowd ever in a single arena in the city’s history – 60,000 – and it seems every citizen was somehow involved in the Games, whether through volunteering, hosting visitors or working at it.
The Herald column gave a sense of the scope of the event and the ensuing global publicity that could be expected.
And it did put Calgary on the map. Tourists came from all over the world to attend the 1988 Winter Games, which were the first to be declared “the best ever” by the Olympic president. But they continued to visit for years based on what they saw on television. Calgary was a city on the move and the Olympics gave it even more profile and legitimacy and for those reasons we chose this front page