Then we got a call from our son Doug and his wife Cathy, who had stopped in Vancouver on their way home. They had obtained tickets to some Olympic events and urged us to join them for a few days. We were all excited as we piled into the car with the girls and headed across the Coquihalla Highway to Surrey.
That night, after supper we took the Sky Train to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver. When we got off the train, the six of us joined a joyous mob of thousands, most wearing red and white, and pressed so tightly together you could scarcely raise an arm. “Stay close,” Cathy shouted. That wasn’t hard since we were practically glued to each other. Suddenly brilliant laser beams flashed along a zip-line stretched between two office towers about three blocks apart. Athletes in uniforms representing various Olympic events sped along it to deafening roars from the crowd. Gas jet cauldrons ignited periodically with a burst of Canadian colours. Then came the dazzling fireworks display followed by choruses of “ooh’s” and “aah’s.”
Friday morning the rain began. Armed with umbrellas and wearing parkas, scarves and gloves, we boarded the Sky Train to connect with the Cypress Mountain bus for the snowboarding event. We had to dodge puddles for about half a kilometre along the slushy, icy trail before reaching the venue, then climb about 200 steps to our seats. The rain showed no sign of stopping so we covered up with some trusty plastic garbage bags while watching the athletes trying to manoeuvre their course in the relentless downpour.
The cold wind and fog made it difficult for the competitors at the top of the mountain, and one spectator predicted, “They’re all going to get pneumonia.” But the athletes, displaying amazing tenacity and determination, seemed undeterred. After about four hours we were wet and shivering, our fingers and toes numb. We trudged back to the bus and an hour later retreated to a downtown Tim Hortons for a welcome bowl of hot soup.
That night was the semi-final hockey game between Team Canada and Team Slovakia. Don sat by a man in a wheelchair, a para-Olympian named Joe. “You should be wearing a red shirt, buddy,” Joe admonished, and then pulled a red Canadian jersey from his duffel bag. Don could have explained that his own red shirt was drying after our wet morning on Cypress Mountain, but instead he simply thanked Joe and pulled the shirt on while Joe smiled his approval. Slovakia was a determined team, but when Canada pulled off a narrow 3–2 win, it was bedlam among the joyous, predominately Canadian, red and white clad crowd. The win assured Team Canada of a silver medal, and the opportunity to play Team USA for gold on Sunday.
After Doug, Cathy, and the girls left for home Sunday morning Don and I headed back to Robson Square. We hoped to roam around the area while intermittently checking on the gold medal hockey game, which would be televised on a giant, raised TV screen in the Square.
With an hour left before game time we managed to find a deli with a vacant table that had a clear view of a TV screen. We couldn’t believe our good fortune and promptly ordered coffee and a pastry.
What a game it was! In the third period it seemed Team Canada had it wrapped up at 3–2 until Team USA scored with 24.4 seconds left in regulation time.
“Oh no!” everyone groaned. “We can’t lose now!”
Could Canada still win? With the game in overtime, Sidney Crosby — “Sid the Kid” — answered the question decisively when he slammed in the winning goal and everyone went wild. Unbridled joy erupted… clapping and cheering. “Way to go, Crosby!” someone blasted exuberantly. There were no sour faces in that crowd! It was a great day for Canada — and we were there.
It was a good day for the deli, too. Tips were generous, and appropriately so, since forty people had enjoyed good food, excellent service and front row seats to the “Golden Game.”
There was euphoria in the streets, with cheering, hugging and high-fiving between total strangers. Kids wearing red and white make-up raced along the streets holding Canadian flags as big as they were. While waiting for our Sky Train a rich tenor voice began singing “O Canada” and within seconds there was a choir. How delightful to experience such exuberant, spontaneous expressions of Canadian Spirit!
This bond of pride and appreciation that Canadians share for our great country — usually quietly, found full and joyous expression during the 2010 Winter Olympics. The committed, talented athletes who competed for Canada inspired us. We were overjoyed for those who won medals.
As Canadians, we don’t generally boast to the world about our country. It’s not our nature. But that doesn’t mean we don’t realize how privileged we are to live in Canada. I suspect most agree we live in simply the best place in the world. Perhaps it is that shared bond of pride and deep appreciation that constitutes the “Spirit of Canada,” and thrives in the hearts of Canadians all year round.
~Gerri Nicholas
Sherwood Park, Alberta
The Flood of the Century
We fought side by side with neighbours and friends; Yet the Red River kept rising, without end.
~Darrell Scarrett
It began with a freak spring blizzard the first weekend in April of 1997. Winnipeggers were blinded for forty-eight hours as gale-force winds dumped a hundred centimetres of heavy, wet snow. By Sunday everything looked pristine and new. The cars in my neighbourhood were mounded snowdrifts, and shops and buildings were thickly caked, like fancy snow palaces.
It wasn’t until Monday that the blizzard’s significance sunk in. The first words I heard when I entered the newsroom at the Winnipeg Sun for my 5:00 p.m. copy-editing shift were: “There’s gonna be a flood.”
Several editors had gathered around a primitive graphics display mapping the predicted water levels of the Red River over the next ninety days. Several cities and smaller towns along its banks, including Winnipeg, were at risk. It was a sombre briefing. Our city desk editor stroked his grey beard: “With this much snow so close to spring, it’s gonna go straight into the Red.” He rapped his knuckles once on the meeting table, signalling the meeting was over.
From that point forward, the “crest” of the Red — its highest point — became the focus of all activity, discussion, and for some — even their dreams.
One night, ten days after the blizzard, the news desk phone rang. The editor answered it, his voice terse as he responded, “Are they safe now?” And then: “I’ll contact them.” The call had come about two reporters at our rival publication, the Free Press, who’d been sent across the border to cover reports of flooding in Fargo, North Dakota. When the road washed out they’d had to abandon their vehicle and make their way through waist-high water to higher land.
President Clinton had already declared the entire Red River Valley a disaster zone. Then the flood claimed its first lives. A woman and her little girl had also been on that road in Fargo. They too left their car and fled for safety, but perished in the raging floodwaters. In the days that followed I thought of nothing but the safety of my fellow journalists, who were being sent out to investigate stories that placed them at high risk.
A few days later the CBC shifted 100% of its regional programming to flood coverage. We stopped having contact with the rest of the world, our attention focused solely on the minute-by-minute details of the impending “Crest of the Red” and its potential impact.
Ten days later the Crest of the Red came barrelling into the downtown core of East Grand Forks, North Dakota. The deluge started an electrical fire, and downtown was destroyed, leaving 35,000 people homeless. I wondered if this would happen to us, too. We had seventy days to go before the crest was expected to hit us.
An all-out sandbagging effort was now well underway. Every day, before my evening shift at the newspaper, I joined thousands of volunteers who rode in school buses to farms and homesteads with our sandbags.
Each bag weighed forty-five pounds. If you kept moving them from person to person fairly quickly they weren’t too heavy. “These weigh as much as my six-year-old son!” a woman beside me wailed, as a sandbag slid out of her arms and down her leg, leaving a muddy streak in its wake. I b
ent down to help her lift it back up, and showed her how to hold it level — with her biceps outstretched, and her forearms curled like hooks around the bag. The line stopped and waited patiently until we could resume passing them forward again.
Each site had a crew director at the front directing bag placement, with the strongest volunteers at either end of the line for lifting and unloading. Advice was freely offered: “Wear work gloves, keep your forearms covered. Take ibuprofen before you leave in the morning. Get some juice in you, you look exhausted. Did you bring a hat?”
Sixty days to go and we were still sandbagging, strangers looking after each other. Like everything else, there was a knack to it, a rhythm, and many tiny adjustments that once learned, made it easier. Despite the daily exhaustion, the unrelenting fear, I experienced something else that was deeply heart-warming, a kind of moral ecstasy that built up inside of me. I credit it with my ongoing ability to jump out of bed for another day of sandbagging despite the aches and pains.
The morning the Canadian Army, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, arrived in downtown Winnipeg, I heard boats on the Assiniboine River beside my building. There were three of them — each packed with Army personnel — as well as a helicopter. All of them were heading directly toward me. I felt suddenly dizzy with anxiety; it felt like a war zone.
The troops pitched in, digging trenches and sandbagging along with the rest of us. Much to-do was made of their arrival in the national media, the Army’s humanitarian assistance coming, as it did, in the wake of the Somalia affair.
With every conceivable weak spot for kilometres now sandbagged, and the Crest of the Red now a mere seventy-two hours away, a potentially fatal flaw in the city’s fortification system was discovered. Pulling out all the stops, a last-ditch (literally) effort began to erect what came to be known as the Brunhilde Dike. A Z-shaped breaker-wall made of dirt, rocks, sand, crushed cars and even old school buses emerged from round-the-clock labour, and heavy digging and levelling equipment.
When the seventy-two hours were up, Winnipeggers held their breath as the water rose and the Crest of the Red arrived. Would the dike hold? With only inches to spare the water stopped rising — and the dike held. Winnipeggers collectively breathed out… and the majority of the city was spared.
It was the end of May, and the flood clean-up was well underway. Those who had not escaped the water’s damage set about restoring their homes and businesses. I boarded the Via Rail train for a much-needed visit to family back in Ontario. As the passenger cars full of Prairie dwellers pulled away from the station, a porter offered us all drinks with tiny umbrellas and everyone cheered. As the wheels of the train picked up speed, the talk in the car became light, woven with laughter. I reflected on how I had grown during the whole experience, starting as a confused twenty-something, and becoming part of a community that had united to preserve life and property for everyone.
~Erin McLeod
Sault St. Marie, Ontario
Bonding at the Rink
I have a huge interest in hockey because I grew up in Canada, where it’s kind of the law that you love hockey.
~Matthew Perry
Hockey is huge in Canada, particularly in my hometown, where the Toronto Maple Leafs are an institution. Despite not winning the Stanley Cup since 1967, their games are always sold out and millions tune in to watch on TV.
But I grew up in a family that had no interest whatsoever in hockey. My parents were decidedly not athletic, and although I had skating lessons, I never really learned how to skate properly. I had never even seen a hockey game until I spent a Saturday evening with a friend’s family and they were all glued to Hockey Night in Canada. Sometimes I felt I’d missed out on our national passion.
When I met my future husband, he had been divorced for about three years. Dave’s ex-wife and two young sons lived nearby, and he saw the boys every weekend. I was uneasy when I first met nine-year-old Mike and eleven-year-old Scott, and they were understandably shy and cautious. But everyone soon relaxed and after a few visits we felt more at ease and enjoyed spending time together.
Dave and his sons were huge hockey fans, and both boys played on local teams. When Dave and I went out on dates, we often went to the boys’ games first, before heading off for dinner. They were a lot of fun! Dave taught me the basic rules, explaining what “offside” was and what “icing” meant. Both boys played well, and we had so much fun cheering them on.
While everything seemed right between Dave and me, I was still a bit uneasy about the situation. It was quite a change from my single lifestyle and I wondered what the boys really thought of me, in private. Did they worry that I would try to take their mother’s place? Did they resent the time I spent alone with their father? And I was very uneasy about what their mother might think. After all, I was stepping into her world.
When Scott’s team arranged a father and son game, Dave was excited and eager to join. He had grown up playing hockey and was very good at it. Since we had plans for later that night, I went with Dave to the arena. But once he got his skates on and went out on the ice, I was left on my own.
The arena had a closed off, heated area for spectators, but I felt uncomfortable there by myself, so I wandered out along the side of the rink. There were a few benches there, so I sat down to watch the game. Everyone was having a lot of fun, and Dave often waved to me as he happily skated by.
Then a woman came out of the parents’ area and started walking toward me. I had seen her with the boys several times, so I knew she was their mother, but we had never met. Her smile was warm and reassuring as she sat down beside me and said, “Hi, I’m Mary Lou. Scott and Mike have told me a lot of nice things about you.”
“They are wonderful boys,” I said, with a sigh of relief. “They are always so nice to me.”
At that moment, Dave skated by, close to the boards in front of us. At first he smiled just at me. Then he noticed Mary Lou beside me and did a classic double take! His eyes popped wide open as he glided halfway down the rink. He turned back and opened his mouth to say something, and then slid right into another father.
Both Mary Lou and I laughed at his reaction, then turned toward each other again and continued our friendly chat. Dave kept on playing, but glanced our way often. He looked worried, probably wondering just what we were talking about!
Dave and I have been happily married for thirty-eight years now. Mary Lou and I have become great friends over time. We have two wonderful grandchildren, and we attend their hockey games together. As easy as it all has been, I have never once forgotten Mary Lou’s kindness, consideration and warmth at that awkward time. For me, that one particular hockey game became a watershed moment, one that changed my life.
All we need now is for the Maple Leafs to win!
~Julia Lucas
Aurora, Ontario
Stranded at Big Sandy
It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada, but because she’s something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.
~Emily Carr
I tucked our five-year-old daughter, Gae, into the bottom bunk of our compact hardtop trailer. Her teenage brother, Brent, had already usurped the top bunk, and my husband, Leo, was helping four-year-old Glen snuggle down inside a sleeping bag on the floor. It was to be the last night of a two-week family fishing trip spent “north of 53,” the parallel separating western Canada’s wheat fields from its wilderness.
Parked on either side of us along the shoreline of Big Sandy Lake were six or seven other units. Behind our trailer was the bear-proof garbage barrel and beyond that, dense forest. Shivering from the dampness, I crawled into bed. I could hardly wait to get back to our comfortable suburban home the next night.
Little did I know that our most memorable vacation was just beginning, not by choice but by circumstance.
Two hours after we went to bed, a violent thunderstorm rocked our trailer. The wind was how
ling, lightning was illuminating the sky, and rain was pouring down. A tree crashed into the undergrowth nearby.
The storm lasted for hours. Leo and I kept vigil until the clouds finally rumbled off over the lake. When we surveyed the damage at daybreak we discovered the nearby bridge had been swept away. We suspected the same was true of several more. There were at least thirty of us, including several children, now stranded at the edge of Big Sandy Lake, with no cell phone coverage, cut off from hydro and with insufficient food supplies.
The kids and I had to wade barefoot through five inches of water to reach the outhouse. Broken branches littered the path to the pump where we got our drinking water. Two huge trees had fallen across the trail to the woodpile. “I’m hungry! When are we gonna eat?” Brent asked. He had a good point and that sent a wave of anxiety through me. As we crowded around the little table in our trailer, I doled out breakfast more carefully than usual. Four-year-old Glen rattled off the blessing. “God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food.” Little did we know how meaningful that little daily prayer would become.
“Anybody goin’ fishin’?” an elderly man called through the screen door. Tycoon, the retired fellow camped next to us, was carrying his fishing rod and a huge scoop net. “Olga tells me I oughta git out and rustle up a little grub, seein’ as how we’re gonna be here a spell.” Noting the size of Leo’s much smaller dip net, Tycoon remarked, “Boy, I can sure see you ain’t got much faith!”
That’s my problem, too, I thought to myself as I watched them go toward the lake. Other campers soon followed. “Deadpan” began soberly trolling along the edge of the lake for pickerel. Lance was casting among the cattails for northern pike. Others had headed out for deeper water in search of trout. “Git the fryin’ pan hot!” Tycoon called to me a couple of hours later, as he came shuffling up the path carrying a pail of pickerel fillets. “The others are still down in the filletin’ hut dividin’ up the bounty.”