Friday's opening ceremony of the Paralympics will be a family-friendly show that will include a segment about the origins of the international sporting event, says the producer of the event.

Patrick Roberge said to expect to see 5,000 performers ranging in age from four to 92 on the field at BC Place Stadium. Athletes will join the entertainers in a show that he promised would be "incredibly family-friendly."

"Our goal is to make the audience incredibly inspired and enthused about the Paralympics," he said early Tuesday before heading to a full day of rehearsal.

"What I've found working on the Paralympics is that the athletes themselves have been personally inspiring to me. We want that to be translated in the show."

The two-hour opening ceremony starts at 6 p.m. If you aren't in BC Place to see the show live, you can watch it the next day on CTV at 2 p.m., he said, followed by a sledge hockey game between Canada and Italy. Altogether, CTV is broadcasting 27 hours of high-definition coverage in English and 30 hours in French.

Opening ceremony tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at www.vancouver2010.com

Roberge said he doesn't want people sitting back and just watching the two-hour show. He wants them on their feet and cheering so that when it's all over, they feel as if they've been part of an unforgettable shared experience.

"I never saw anything like what we experienced during the Olympics with Canadians celebrating their pride, waving their flag, wearing the colours, being proud and excited," he said.

"We're going to pick up where they left off. The Paralympics ceremony will be exactly that. We want people on their feet, waving their arms and showing that they're incredibly proud that the Paralympics are here."

Roberge wouldn't reveal any names of entertainers in Friday's show.

"This show is about the collective cast together," he said. "There will be people you recognize, people you never heard of, and people doing amazing things."

Like the Winter Olympics, the Paralympics will have formal elements such as the parade of athletes and the raising of the Paralympic flag. There will be a ceremonial lighting of the cauldron '€” the same one used by the Winter Olympics. Asked if it has been tested to make sure the fourth leg rises, Roberge laughed and said the cauldron would be used '€” but in a different way. He wouldn't elaborate.

Roberge did say that the opening ceremony will in part tell the history of the Paralympics. It started when Dr. Ludwig Guttman arranged a sporting competition for Second World War veterans in Stoke Mandeville, England on the first day of the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Guttman believed in sport as therapy for disabled soldiers.

By 1960, the Paralympic movement had grown to the point that the first summer games were held in Rome; the first winter Paralympics took place in 1976 in Ornskildsvik, Sweden. Holding the Paralympics in the same venues as the Olympics started in Seoul in 1988 (summer) and Albertville (winter) in 1992.

The word Paralympics was coined by combining paraplegic with Olympics. But with the addition of disabled athletes who didn't have spinal injuries, the word changed to refer to a sports competition held in parallel with the Olympics.

The Paralympic Winter Games end on Sunday, March 21 in a closing ceremony in Whistler.

kevingriffin@vancouversun.com