My household has been eagerly anticipating the Olympics for months. In part because we're all sports fans, right down to my six-year old daughter, but also because we have strong family ties to Vancouver and it's like a second home to us. The controversies and struggles in preparing for the Games have been made real to us through cousins and routine trips to the city, so Friday was a big day for us and Olympic coverage started early.
I had actually planned to post something in anticipation of the Olympics but too many things happened on Friday for just one post, especially one that would have been written in the heat of emotion.
Initially, I was planning to write about my criticism of the Harper Government's foreign training time limitations and aggressive push for the podium plans. A lot has been made about how upset this has made other countries, while defenders of the policies point out that the government's actions are not out of line of what other countries, such as the US and China did, it is unusual to see this behaviour coming from Canada. As the host country, the Harper Government says, if we want to win a bundle of medals, this is one of the tools at our disposal. Sure, I would like to see Canada win a whole sackful of medals that do not include the typically Canadian Bronze (ie. fourth place), but do I want this to occur at the expense of our Canadian identity and our notions of fair play? Are we going to encourage our athletes to take performance enhancing drugs because China and the US do that too? For me, these questions raised a much larger issue, do I want Canada to engage in the same kind of realpolitik as other nations, pursuing the same ends and the same means? Should we subsidize corporations at the cost of our social infrastructure, or sell surplus military weapons to developing nations because that's the way it's done? No, I do not. We're Canada and I'd like to hold on to my naive romantic notions that we can do things a different, uniquely Canadian way.
So I was deeply conflicted heading into Friday, as part of me hoped the best for our athletes, but another, much quieter part - a part hidden deep down inside, hoped that our athletes would do poorly. So poorly perhaps that the resulting anger would topple the Harper Government, and in those moments, I found myself ashamed and hating both the Harper Government and myself for thinking such thoughts.
And then I looked up from my notebook and saw Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian luger, fly off the track, into a pole and lie unnaturally still on the ground. In my heart, I knew he wasn't going to be ok and my first thoughts went to how horrified I would have been as a parent if that was my daughter. I turned to her, sitting next to me on the couch, her eyes wide in shock. "I don't think people should do this game," she said. "I'm going to stick to soccer." My wife changed the channel and I felt all my anger rise as this was a training run. In those first moments, it didn't matter to me that he was a young athlete, maybe too inexperienced to be on the track, or maybe that the engineers had built the track too fast. No, in my mind, more training could have saved this boy, and more training was precisely the thing we denied him. It took me a long time to calm down afterwards and I realize that the whole thing is far more complicated and tragic than simple government policy.
For the Opening Ceremonies we went down to Make 1, the local yarn shop. My wife and some of the other ladies at the shop had organized a special "knit along" as part of their online Ravelry Knitting Olympics. They all gathered around the television, waiting for things to start so that they could begin their special Olympic projects. My wife had vowed to knit eleven socks and the others were all equally ambitious. It was a lot of fun to watch the ceremonies surrounded by friends, and checking in with my other friends around the globe via Facebook and Twitter.
The Ceremonies themselves were good, I liked the straight-forward narrative of most of the performances. It was a surprise to see Bryan Adams still performing regardless of the fact that Nelly Furtado was there. Sarah McLaughlin was good, though the best performance to me came from K.D. Lang and her version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallajeuh."
Like many, we were all speculating who the final torch bearer would be. I had heard a rumour earlier in the day suggesting the Gretzky was out of contention, so we guessed all sorts of names, but Marc Gagnon, the most decorated Winter Olympian was considered our likeliest choice. That Gretzky ultimately lit the torch did not surprise us, but the inclusion of Rick Hansen, Catriona Le May Doan, Nancy Greene and Steve Nash did.
The Opening Ceremonies were meant to reflect on Canada, and what it meant to be simultaneously a Canadian and a member of an international community. The moment that I'll cherish as making me feel proud to be Canadian was Romeo Dalliare carry in the flag. Considering Dalliare's efforts to alert the international community to the atrocities in Rwanda, and the way the international community ignored him, I feel like giving Dalliare such a tremendous honour at one of the highest profile international events held in Canada, was a way for us to remind everyone what happened. I know that a few moments ago I was expressing my disgust at the Harper Government for their international relations vis-a-vis training times, but I'd like to give full props to whoever picked Dalliare to carry the flag.
