Party’s Over

Seeing Red with CTV:the Crimson Tight Vancouverites, at the game

 So it’s all done and wrapped up after Canada, thank the Lord, beat the US in men’s hockey in overtime. And for the first time, not only did we “own the podium”, winning more gold medals than any other country in the history of the Winter games, we got over something.

This Olympics was significant because for the first time that I can recall, Canadians didn’t feel OK with second-best. We cheered and screamed till we were hoarse, we were a sea of red and white from coast to coast and we let our freaky Maple Leaf flag fly high. Vancouver was transformed from a sleepy anti-urban, too-cosy provincial town with a gorgeous landscape into a real, vital city with a big beating heart and a soul.

And the country, which held its breath throughout the games in its fear of being mediocre on the world stage, seemed to be transformed with it. Instead of fear and mediocrity we were all in-your-face swagger and it was wonderful.

Which is why the closing ceremonies (with the single exception of Neil Young singing Long May you Run before the Olympic cauldron as if it were a giant campfire) fell so terribly flat. The old cliches of our national identity (saying we’re sorry, sex in a canoe, moose and mounties) no longer seem to define us. We are bigger and bolder than that already and clearly eager and hungry for more.