My pride was at an all time high last night. What other Country would you have aboriginal dancers, a gay singer (KD Lang blew me away with her rendition of Hallelujah), a slam poet (transcript of Shane Koyczan's "We are more") and punk fiddlers representing them artistically?
As I write this pro-Canada "puff piece", the Canadian women's hockey team juts scored their first goal of the tournament. Lauren and I saw them arrive at YVR last Sunday when we were in transit on our way home from Nelson (wow, goal 2 was just scored 3:06 into period 1). What a classy group of athletes!
Back to my original thought, I am glad to be able to show off this beautiful province to the world, rain and all...The sense of pride and excitement that has been swelling throughout the province and country over the past few weeks is tangible.
I think that the (generally) positive effects of national pride and happiness that Canadians are feeling is seriously undervalued. I realize that host nations don't often make a financial profit from the Games, but Vancouver/Whistler has gained some long-overdue infrastructure upgrades, but more importantly, Canadians are proud to be Canadian (goal 3), "painting the town red". We don't often wave the Maple Leaf high,focusing instead on sewing them on our backpacks, but Canadians seem to have committed to making a party of this, so yes, let's celebrate our Canadian'ness.
To be honest, I am also glad that it was the impetus of an "Own the Podium" mentality. I think that there is absolutely nothing incompatible with being nice friendly and insanely competitive.......... (goal 5-you couldn't script the timing of these goals any better).
Here are some amazing images from the opening ceremonies from the Boston Globe:
Finally, if anyone knows who this athlete is, well, he certainly has the voyageur/mountain man look down and looks appropriately stoked to be standing in that infield:
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6 comments:
My wife and I moved to Vancouver so she she could go to grad school. I fell in love with the place. But I couldn't get a visa (while the US will give visas out like candy, even to terrorists. You guys got it right). Bummed for sure! Otherwise we might still be living there.
Nigeria... really!? That's pretty cool.
T
Hey Lucho, sorry to hear about the worries at the race.I agree about the perspective that an RD needs to take "He needs to take the perspective of a focused, not-thinking clearly runner who has never run the course and mark the course through the eyes of a first timer."
Not so sure Canada is known as a tough country to immigrate to. We just have an aversion to letting big mileage runners into the country!
Great post. Now I don't know you and I'm not a nitpicker and generally dislike people who spell check but I know you are in law studies and I just loved how you wrote 'waive the flag' rather than wave. That made me chuckle- you need a break! :)
Dawno
Thanks for the comment & for reading Dawno.
I appreciate the correction, an extra pair of eyes proof reading is always a good thing!
Your trip to Uganda sounded wonderful, east Africa really is a magical part of the world. It is hard not to be touched by the kids when you visit.
Drive carefully. It is not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker.............................................
Great posting Adam, can I copy and paste into my own blog and say I wrote it? Really though, I think you did steal my thoughts, so I have some right to do this!
GR
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