Athletes and researchers are touting a potential Calgary bid to host the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games as an avenue to creating a city where people with accessibility concerns can live or visit with ease. 

Lonnie Bissonette, a para-bobsleigh athlete, credits the legacy of the 1988 Winter Olympics with allowing him the opportunity to compete in his sport. “If they didn’t have that, I never would have been able to get into the sport.”

According to the Paralympic Movement, the 1988 Paralympic Winter Games were held in Innsbruck, Austria, not Calgary, due to ‘issues with the Calgary 1988 Organisational Committee in Canada’.  

A potential bid from Calgary to host the 2026 Olympic Winter Games would include the 2026 Paralympic Winter Games and Bissonette says the Games would help Calgary become more accessible.

Shane Esau, a research coordinator for pediatric rehabilitation, has attended the Paralympic Games in  Athens, Beijing, Vancouver, London and Rio. He says there is a noticeable difference in accessibility in the host cities ahead of the Games.

 “In 2007, Rio had the Para-Pan Am Games and they were very, I would say, inaccessible,” explained Esay. “ For the Rio Paralympic Games, the city had just expanded and a lot of accessibility and housing was more accessible, the roads were more accessible. It was a huge infrastructure change to that city.”

“When we do a site visit for a Paralympic Games, and I’ve been on a few of them, we take a tape measure, we measure doors.”

Kathy Brant, a Calgarian who utilizes a cane, questions whether accessibility would improve given the proposal to adapt existing venue sites if Calgary 2026 submits a hosting bid. “They are using mostly existing buildings,” explained Brant. “It would be patchwork.”

For Esau, the combination of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are a driving force for infrastructure improvements but warns that designs for new facilities or adaptations of existing structures  must be focused to ensure important details are not overlooked. Esau provides the housing concerns of this year’s Canadian Rugby Championships in Calgary as an example. “Everything else was accessible but just the washrooms weren’t so then they couldn’t have all those athletes there.”

With files from CTV's Alesia Fieldberg