An Olympic-sized question
illustration by Devin Beauregard
CONGRATULATIONS, AMERICA. YOU got Canadians riled up throughout the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, just enough for us to feel the perfect amount of passionate anger to a) win the gold medal in men’s hockey on Feb. 28 and b) celebrate long enough to stay hungover into the next month (and yet never tire of rubbing the win—and our 14 gold medals—in your faces).
For the past few weeks—and likely for more weeks to come—Canadians have come close to embodying the less-than-Canadian characteristic that Americans and many in the rest of the world had predicted: true, patriot arrogance. Is this an entirely bad thing? Not necessarily. You can’t help but show more love for your country when it breaks the record for most gold medals won at the Winter Games. Besides, it was only to balance out the less-than-positive feelings we had experienced earlier; we had found ourselves strapped for support and aching for inspiration for a while before.
In the weeks leading up to the Feb. 12 opening ceremonies, and even over the fi rst few days of the games, it was easy for Canadians to grow concerned and discouraged when thoughts of the Olympics sprang to mind. Anti-Olympic demonstrations threatened the months-long nationwide torch relay on several occasions. Criticism erupted over our country’s multimillion-dollar Own the Podium program. Protestors wreaked havoc in parts of downtown Vancouver upon the opening of the Games. The British media berated us and claimed the Vancouver Games were in danger of going down as “the worst in Olympic history,” according to one Guardian article.
But then things started to change. As clichéd and Facebook-status-worthy as it sounds, it seemed that Canadians could no longer hear the criticisms and complaints over the number of medals we began to sweep up. One CTV reporter pointed to Canadian Jon Montgomery’s skeleton gold-medal win on Feb. 19 as the turning point—when Canadians shed their uncertainty and began to swell with pride. At that point, we had a number of medals under our belt and were eligible for many more.
But did we go too far? This is the Olympic-sized question. While some contended earlier on that Canada wouldn’t be up to the challenge of hosting these Olympics, others proclaimed that we too quickly reached a level of arrogance for attempting to prove to the world that we could win, significantly, at the Games. The degree of Canadian patriotism demonstrated throughout the Olympics has already become—and will possibly remain—a much-debated and even sore point; but is it in fact our use of this patriotism, not how we show it, with which we should be more concerned?
Consider this: the majority of Canadians celebrated the end of the Games by watching the men’s gold-medal hockey game. Beer in hand, their TV volume at maximum, 16.6 million Canadians, on average, tuned into the game at some point on Feb. 28—many of whom poured into the streets of cities across the country after Sidney Crosby’s game-winning goal in overtime. True, the Canada Day-esque actions brightened that February aft ernoon—but this can’t be all our patriotism is about. It would be far more of an honour to the athletes for audiences to take what they witnessed as inspiration for their own athletic endeavours, or life goals in general. There would be far less criticism and concern over the Own the Podium funding if we could prove that it affected regular citizens, that the supported athletes’ performances motivated them to get up and get active.
Perhaps it’s optimistic to believe that Canadians could take more than just two weeks of entertainment and 14 gold medals’ worth of national pride out of the Vancouver 2010 Games—but we, as Canucks, are nothing if we don’t have optimism out the wazoo, too.
editor@thefulcrum.ca
