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Life Stories & Traditions
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A Street Party of Olympic Proportions By Anna Foschi Ciampolini, Vancouver correspondent
No one really knows what made the difference and prompted the start of the “red tide”, the avalanche of flag-waving, redclad people invading the streets of downtown Vancouver to cheer and party till dawn with unprecedented gusto. ancouver, until recently an ambitious upstart, a newcomer still striving to achieve worldclass status, perpetually confronting its own insecurities, harboured mixed feelings towards the Olympics, ranging from lukewarm support to vocal hostility. Moreover, the Olympics started with multiple sputters; the most tragic was the death of the Georgian luger during a training run on the Whistler Mountain track, a shocking event that unleashed negative comments and condemnation from the international press and marked the Opening Ceremony with a note of sadness. For a few days, the city, drenched in rain, sort of floated between a growing sense of excitement and the paralyzing fear of a colossal fiasco.Then, on the first Olympic Sunday, the sun shone on a brilliant blue sky and people took to the streets: families, babies in strollers, the elderly, bluecollars and professionals, but most of all throngs of youth with their boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm. They were laughing, yelling, cheering the visitors, waiting patiently in the endless line-ups to the attractions. They were dangling on a rope, riding the popular zip-line and the city suddenly came alive with an infusion of joyfulness and enthusiasm, rather unusual for the relaxed, almost sleepy atmosphere of a place known as Lotus Land. That Sunday, freestyle skier Alexandre Bilodeau vaulted to Olympic glory with a perfect double-full and a back-iron cross that brought the first gold medal to Team Canada. Maybe it was during that defining moment that the Great Vancouver Party began. More and more people kept coming from all four corners filling up the streets till dawn, dancing, improvising conga lines and singing impromptu renditions of the national anthem, all fuelled by enthusiasm and yes, rivers of beer and generous smokes of the infamous BC bud, but miraculously without violence or major incidents. The crowd basked in the pride of seeing Canada bring home gold medal after gold medal and the most coveted of all, the gold in the men’s hockey final game. The elated mood on the last evening of the games took on almost a magical quality.
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It was a magnificent madness, a carnival of fools. We felt part of the world family and we felt like brothers in Canada, with a renewed sense of pride and national identity. Immigrants were cheering maybe even more loudly than generation-old Canadians. In a kaleidoscope of faces and races we, the immigrants, embraced the Maple Leaf as the symbol of the country that has embraced us. In the suburbs, the excitement was more subdued, nevertheless Canadian flags were everywhere and tourists were spotted shopping in the suburban malls. In Burnaby, one day, in the near empty parking lot behind a gas station where I parked my car, I saw a little girl running back and forth in an effort to break her personal speed record, while her father timed her with a stopwatch and shouted encouragements. It was a late afternoon, the luminosity in the sky was softened by the golden and pinkish hues of the coming sunset and I was going home from work. I stopped by for a few minutes, smiling at the blond little girl who kept yelling, “I can do better! I can do better!” after every attempt at dashing faster and faster. Of the many images captured on cameras and broadcasted on television, the one that captivated me the most was the chronicling of a minor episode. On the first training day of the Olympics in Whistler Mountain, a lynx appeared out of nowhere and crossed the ski tracks. It was a magnificent animal, a solitary predator which moved with deadly grace on the white snow. The lynx stopped for a moment in front of a giant Vancouver 2010 billboard, then jumped over it and disappeared into the woods. That postcard-perfect, iconic image was a true, powerful symbol of the untamed Canadian wilderness, an expression of the awesome power of nature that will endure long after the party ended and the Olympic Torch was extinguished. v
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Antonio Salvatore Guglionesi,CB 1/10/1921 Montreal 5/4/2009 Arrivato in Canada il 20/10/1964 Si j’avais une journée de plus à passer avec toi, je commencerais par te faire connaître ma filleule Adriana que tu as manquée que d’une journée.