A true sense of Canadian pride

There wasn’t a dry eye in our household when we watched the Dufour-Lapointe sisters receive their gold and silver medals as the Canadian flags rose above their heads.
On Saturday, we watched how excited 19 year old Justine was when she nudged out her sister Chloé to capture the gold and when she realized that she had won, her shriek of excitement as she danced across the snow.
Sunday her tears of happiness flowed down her cheeks as they did in our household.
As a Canadian, I am always amazed at our athletes and their achievements. My heart bursts with pride when they compete.
Not to be outdone, our figure skating team, the largest contingent that has ever gone to the Olympics received the silver falling to the Russians. The competition pitted the elite of the elite against each other.
One can’t help but be amazed by Mark Morris who road a broken back rib to a bronze medal finish in the men’s slopestyle, a new event to the Olympics. It was our first medal!
Monday Canadian Charles Hamelin capture a gold medal in the 1500 meter short track speed skating event. The win was immediately followed up with a gigantic kiss to his girl friend. Four years ago a similar win and kiss was flashed around the world on U-tube.
The tears of joy, the emotion with families tells us a lot about the games and our athletes. Even when they fail to achieve a medal, they speak emotionally about what it means to compete for Canada at the Olympics. And as Canadians we live vicariously in their world.
We cringe when we see a mistake. We share their pain when they fall in a skiing accident. We feel their emotional pain when they come up short in their sport. As Canadians we would like to wrap our arms around all of our athletes and give them huge hugs for just representing us on the world stage.
Our Canadian athletes keep proving to us that we can compete on even terms with all the nations of the world. They are building in us a Canadian sense of pride and for that we will always be indebted to them.
Most of the sports are not team driven but individual events where the athlete is alone in their performance. A momentary hesitation, a hundredth of a second, a slight wobble, or a slip of a ski can be all the difference between receiving a medal or falling short.
Locally we like to grab on to neighbours and feel that they are our own athletes. Eric Radford who hails originally from Red Lake, has all of North Western Ontario rooting for him when he and Meagan Duhamel take to the ice. The pair have been adopted as family by all Northern Ontarians.
Over the next two weeks we will continue to see more athletic prowess as skaters, skiers, show off new skills to the world. Traditional sports of hockey and curling will get our hearts beating as we cheer on truly Canadian sports.
Let’s continue to cheer on Canadians.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher