Cranbrook, BC – Cranbrook City Councillor Diana J. Scott got to take part in one of her favourite endeavours recently: promoting the Kootenay region. She was in Richmond during the Olympics, volunteering in the O-zone, where BC Street was set up. Seven different areas of the province were featured, including the Kootenay region.

Kootenay Rockies Tourism, the RDEK, RDCK, and Kootenay Boundary Regional District took part, along with the Ktunaxa Nation. About 20 volunteers representing the entire area got to meet with the thousands of people visiting the booth.

“Sunday, my first day of volunteering, we had about six thousand people come through the booth”, Scott says. ‘It was only the second day of the Olympics, yet we’d already nearly run out of printed material for people to take home. Luckily, Kootenay Rockies had a catchy plan to lure people back to thinking about the Kootenays. We took pictures of visitors in front of a backdrop, which looked like a Kootenay Rockies magazine. They sat on a bench in front of a log cabin in beautiful Yoho National Park. In the picture, it looked like they were right there. People thought it was very cool, and when they got home, they could download the photo from the BC Street website, which also has links and information on our area”.

Scott says another big draw were the Kootenay Knitting hats and scarves.

“We were giving them away in hourly draws. They were so popular! Everyone wanted to buy one”!

Scott says while she was there, most of the people coming through the booth were from BC, but many hadn’t been to the area recently. “They commented on how beautiful it was, and how they should really think about vacationing here, especially since it’s close to home. In these tough economic times, exploring BC is an option many are thinking about, rather than going out-of-country”.

“The other fun thing was meeting people who’d been born here, grew up here, and worked here. So many people came to the booth just to chat and reminisce about graduating from high school, seeing if we knew their friends, and talking about how their experiences. I had people ask me if I knew Jim Chiu and Fred Hoechsmann, how the Kimberley Dynamiters were doing, what my favourite golf course was, and some telling stories about how they were born in the old hospital or graduated from Mount Baker”.

“Former St. Mary’s Chief Sophie Pierre stopped in to volunteer one day while I was there. She was also working at a booth the Aboriginal House in downtown Vancouver. She couldn’t believe the number of people going through that venue. She told me line-ups to get in were about four hours long, and I heard on the news about 14,000 people went through daily. That’s a lot of talking and promoting!”

“Showcasing our area to the world was a terrific experience. It’s such an important part of the Olympics. The whole of B.C. is going to benefit over the next decade through increased tourism and trade deals. It’ll be awhile before we can quantify the benefit, but there’s no doubt in my mind hosting the Olympics was worth it.”