Vancouver’s Olympic cauldron was lit Wednesday night to commemorate the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, five days after the opening ceremony.
The cauldron was sparked at 8 p.m. in Jack Poole Plaza as a gathering crowd chanted the words to "O Canada," joining Olympic cauldrons in Calgary and Montreal that have been ablaze since Friday.
The Crown-owned B.C. Pavilion Corporation, which runs the cauldron and neighbouring Vancouver Convention Centre, said the lighting is being funded by anonymous donors – but there isn’t enough to keep the flames going non-stop.
Vancouver’s natural gas-fuelled cauldron costs about $6,400 to light for just four hours. Running it until the end of the Games would burn up about $200,000.
PavCo said it’s instead aiming to light the cauldron at 6 p.m. every evening that Team Canada wins a gold medal, and on the night of the closing ceremony.
