Prince George, B.C. – The majority of the torchbearers for the 2015 Canada Winter Games Torch Relay were announced on Friday.

More than 400 nominations were received at the 2015 Games office by the August 15^th deadline and then began the difficult process of selecting the torchbearers from among the long list of quality nominations received. Yesterday Games officials announced the names of 127 people selected to carry the torch: 16 from Fort St. John, 71 from Prince George, 22 from Quesnel and 18 residents of Terrace. But it had been expected there would be 150 torchbearers in total.

Communications and Community Relations Manager Alyson Gourley-Cramer says “we’ll have 150, in fact we’ll probably have just over 150, it’s just we could only publish the names that had confirmed.” Once confirmation has been received from other successful nominees their names will be released. “There will be definitely 150 and maybe 15 or so over that. You would be so inspired by some of the incredible stories. And we also wanted to make sure that all of the regions got adequate coverage because, as you can imagine, we had many more (nominations) in Prince George.”

So how were the torchbearers selected? “We have a planning committee for the torch relay and our CEO weighed in and my team looked at them all. But we have a nine-member planning committee of strong community members who read every single story and we had to categorize them. So we tried to have equal representation from the four themes of youth, sport, community and culture, and then we wanted to have representation of the regions so we looked at that and it was really the most inspiring stories. It was very hard to choose, believe me.”

“When you think about how extensive the relay piece is to the games, there are all these external celebrations and the November 4^th celebration is going to be a big one. And we’ve got the Ottawa torch lighting which is Thursday, Oct 16^th.” The lighting on Parliament Hill had been scheduled for October 15^th but Gourley-Cramer says “we had to move it because we’re thrilled to announce that the Governor-General of Canada, David Johnston, will be a part of our event so we moved our date to accommodate his schedule.” The Minister of State for Sport, Bal Gosal, will also be taking part along with a delegation of 2015 Winter Games officials, Chief Dominic Frederick from the Lheidli T’enneh and Mayor Shari Green.

After the Roly McLenahan Canada Games Torch is lit in Ottawa it will head to Victoria to begin the journey through the province toward Prince George. The tour to Illuminate the North will begin its journey across northern B.C. starting with the Prince George leg on the fourth of November. There will also be torch legs in Quesnel, Ft St John and Terrace before the final leg back in Prince George for the 2015 Canada Winter Games opening ceremonies on February 13^th.