Take a bow for the Games of our lives

We are down to the last day of navigating the ferry slalom course to and from the Island or sock speedskating across the family room to the TV remote control. Actually, you won't need the latter today. Nobody from Victoria to St. John's will be changing the channel. If these off-the-charts ratings for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are to be believed, there's only one thing the mass of Canadians will be watching today -- the gold medal men's hockey final against the Americans leading directly into the closing ceremonies as B.C.'s 15 minutes are up.

As it often does, international sport again provided the great communal experience. But it may have done more than that in the host nation, where it has delivered a defining moment.

Many are asking: Is this even the same country we knew?

Did we see Canada change before our very eyes? An over-arching thesis seems to be that the last fortnight has profoundly changed Canada, and that it has shed its timidity to become more assertive and sure of its identity. We'll see. Instant pop analysis rarely stands the test of time.

At the very least, one gets the impression we will never again accept being second-rate on the international sporting stage. Yet even that, much like the George Clooney film, is up in the air. Are we willing to pay for continued excellence in international sport through both the public and private sectors? All that glitters is not gold -- these medals will fizzle into the dank Summer Games air of London in two years and the mists of the Caucasus mountains of Sochi in four years if programs are not maintained. Olympic medals don't just happen. They are bought and paid for by governments.

But this turned out to be more than the sum of all the Canadian medals. As with the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games, it is the pulsating excitement on the streets of the host city that has been most revealing as the people seized the Games from Vanoc, the IOC and government and made them their own. The world saw the emergent cultural makeup of the host province, evident in the TV images of the many of South Asian and other Asian ancestry from the Lower Mainland proudly wearing the Team Canada hockey jersey. That, too, is the changing Canada, and which needs to be represented at least equally alongside the aboriginal and francophone cultures in today's closing ceremonies as B.C. hands off to Sochi, a Russian port city the same population and size as Victoria, only with the Caucasus as a backdrop instead of the Olympic range.

Islanders had plenty to be proud of in connection to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Although the Island didn't have the ample athlete representation it does at the Summer Olympics, being a home-province Winter Games it was inevitable the relationship would be tight and immense, regardless. It was. Nearly half the Vanoc vice-presidents are Islanders and John Furlong himself cut his administrative teeth in Nanaimo. More than 1,000 people from the Island worked these Games as employees or volunteers, from military and police security personnel to Nordic-event course officials and everything in-between. The hugely popular and defining HBC apparel for these Games came about because of Islanders, and the Richmond Olympic Speedskating Oval was designed by Victoria architect Bob Johnston and Victoria firm Cannon Design. The Island, particularly the ever-opportune Mount Washington, provided a training home for hundreds of Winter Olympians from around the world before their Games competitions in Vancouver and Whistler. And every Island taxpayer is involved with these 2010 Winter Olympics, whether they want to be or not.

It concludes today when the entire country grinds to a halt for the Canada-USA gold medal hockey game -- move over England and Brazil, this is our World Cup moment -- before the scene shifts to B.C. Place and what should be an emotive closing ceremony.

No Games marred by the death of a competitor, as these were, can ever be awarded gold. But B.C., and Canada, have earned at least silver in so many other respects.

Source:timescolonist.com/