The Canada summer games are coming to Winnipeg in 2017. And, if you can believe the hype, they’re going to be the best such event of the past half-century.

The Games, held every four years, will take place over a two-week period in July and August and already are in the planning stages. After all, if you want to reap the economic benefits of a $160-million event, you have a five-and-a-half year planning cycle. (Winnipeg won the bid in late 2012.)

Representatives from the 2017 Canada Summer Games, including Mayor Brian Bowman, took in the recently completed Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C., to learn how to host about 4,000 athletes, run a couple of dozen athletic venues and co-ordinate 5,000 volunteers.

Winnipeg’s representatives also are learning from Prince George’s contingency plans. For example, when above seasonal temperatures made the long-track skating oval unusable, officials moved the venue five hours north to Fort St. John, B.C.

But the Winnipeg Games will go beyond mere physical performances. Considering the event will mark the 50th anniversary of the Canada Games and will come just weeks after the country celebrates its 150th birthday, the plan is to showcase Winnipeg to the rest of the nation like never before.

“If there’s one thing that Winnipeg is good at, it’s throwing a big celebration,” Bowman says. “This one in 2017 is going to be so much beyond sport. We really want to show the nation what Winnipeggers are made of.”

Initial plans are to showcase The Forks, the historic meeting place of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, for medal presentations, concerts and other entertainment, as well as every major sporting facility in town. The opening ceremonies will be held at Investors Group Field and the Canada Games’ flame will be extinguished during the closing ceremonies at the MTS Centre. Baseball will be held at Shaw Park (home of the Winnipeg Goldeyes) and there will be swimming at the Pan Am Pool, as well as volleyball and basketball at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba.

Even though athletes participating in the Canada Games rarely are household names beyond, well, their own households, many athletes have used the Games as a springboard to high-profile international and professional careers, including cyclist Clara Hughes, basketball player Steve Nash, boxer Lennox Lewis, figure skater Brian Orser and hockey players Sidney Crosby, Chris Pronger and Paul Kariya.

But the money apparently will not be put toward a local version of Vancouver’s “Own the Podium” program, which funnelled boatloads of cash into developing Canada’s Olympic athletes so they could perform well on home turf (and ice) in 2010.

Ron Lemieux, Manitoba’s minister of tourism, culture, heritage, sport and consumer protection, says that while it would be nice for Team ‘Toba’s athletes to reap an unprecedented medal haul, it’s not a priority.

“That’s not what the Canada Games are all about,” he says. “They’re more than medals. I believe the Games help the athletes to become better citizens, more productive and inclusive in our society.”

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