Patriot Hearts

by John Furlong

  The ceremony in Athens was held at the Panathenian Stadium, which was built in 1895 for the first Olympic Games of the modern era, held a year later. Its coliseum-like design would become the model for modern sports stadiums around the world. The ceremony involved more actresses playing the role of high priestesses, carrying out ancient traditions with utmost seriousness. Governor General Michaëlle Jean was there for the handover, as was Greek President Karolos Papoulias. The flame that had travelled from ancient Olympia was eventually used to light a torch held by Spyros Capralos, president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, who then lit a torch I was holding. I was walking on a cloud, almost oblivious to all that was happening around me.

  “Today we accept the Olympic flame with humility and respect,” I told the thousands in the stands. It was a beautifully warm evening. Soon my torch was used to light a single miner’s lantern. When that was lit I walked off the field with it, holding it high in the air to the delight of those watching. A picture of that moment became my personal favourite of the Games. And that lantern would become my number one memento of the Olympics.

  Despite being completely exhausted, I didn’t get much sleep on the 10-hour flight to Victoria. I don’t think many of the others on the plane did either. Everyone was too excited to doze off, afraid they would miss something. It was all economy seating, save perhaps for the lantern and its siblings, flickering away in a row, strapped in seatbelts with RCMP officers on either side. I opened a few bottles of champagne so everyone could toast the fact that we were bringing the Olympic flame to Canada. At one point, we broke out in a chorus of “O Canada.”

  We were a little behind schedule because international aviation law said the pilots had to spend 18 hours resting in Greece before they could get behind the controls again. This was after we had developed a problem with the plane on the way over and had to make a pit stop in Prestwick, Scotland. The layover law also now meant a stopover in Iceland on the way back for a crew change.

  We were about an hour late landing in Victoria, where Gregor Robertson walked off the plane carrying the flame shortly before 9 AM. The prime minister and premier were waiting on the tarmac to officially welcome the flame to Canadian soil. It was hard not to feel a sense of awe. We had a quick ceremony for the flame in an adjacent hangar, after which I drove into the city with the prime minister, who was just beginning to sense the scale of what we were doing. His presence added greatly to the occasion— validation that these were indeed Canada’s Games. A moment in time for us all.

  The flame, still in the miner’s lantern, would make a grand entrance into Victoria’s Inner Harbour about an hour later aboard a First Nations canoe. The First Nations members accompanying it were dressed in traditional costumes and sang and chanted as they paddled. The lantern was then carried to the steps of the legislature, where it was used to light a cauldron, which stubbornly refused to ignite for a couple of minutes that felt like an hour. I whispered to Darlene Poole that Jack was once again having fun at her expense as she tried to light the cauldron. But light it did, and it was quickly used to ignite a torch that was jointly held by Olympic gold medallists Simon Whitfield and Catriona Le May Doan. The pair carried the first torch together before handing it off to Olympic rower and bronze medallist Silken Laumann of Victoria and Quebec-born diver Alexandre Despatie, who won a silver medal in Athens. We were on the road to Vancouver—106 days to go.

  Day one of the relay was everything I had imagined and more. The crowds were monstrous, everywhere. Victoria and outlying communities completely embraced the flame’s arrival. The only blight on the day was a group of protesters who interrupted the relay’s progress in the city the first night. We had to divert the route a little, and a couple of people lost their opportunity to run with the torch. (We would find spots for them a couple of days later.) But the public reaction to the protesters’ antics was strongly negative and probably deterred other such groups across Canada from trying the same thing. Canadians were fine with protesters making a point, but they wouldn’t tolerate ruining people’s fun in the process.

  My plan was to monitor the relay’s progress and join up with it here and there over the next 105 days. I would often get updates from the road from Jim Richards, and I also got my relay fix by reading media reports from journalists on the road. CTV ’s Tom Walters did an amazing job, I thought, of capturing the joy and elation that the torch’s journey inspired throughout the Far North, from Whitehorse to Iqaluit.

  Most people seemed to be surprised at just how welcome these small, mostly Aboriginal communities made the torch relay team feel when it descended on their towns. Not me. I knew that spirit existed when I first visited them years earlier. Everywhere I went, Aboriginal leaders had asked if there was any chance the torch could come to their town, never in a million years imagining it would. A little Aboriginal community called Kugluktuk in Nunavut had even raised $60,000 to build an Inukshuk and move it to Whistler. They gave it to us as a gift and it now stands outside the Whistler information centre.

  One of the wonderful by-products of the torch’s journey throughout the north was the light it shone on the many problems that continue to exist there. I couldn’t help but think how the travails of our Aboriginal friends in the High Arctic cause us southerners no pain, because we don’t really know about them. So I thought one of the gifts we would eventually leave behind was the stories of these remote communities, the good and the bad. We also hoped to give the children something to dream about and aspire to.

  Old Crow in Yukon may have been the ultimate achievement for the relay. On a per capita basis, I’m not sure any place in the country embraced the torch as strongly. It was incredible, from the moment the relay team’s Air North 737 jet descended on the town’s short runway. People stood on picnic tables and doghouses in their backyards, with cameras and cellphones to capture the historic moment. It was the first time a jet had ever landed in the town.

  I remember reading an account of the day by Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail. In it he talked about a young man named Kyikavichik, who took to the stage to give an oral history of the Gwich’in people. Without referring to a single note, he talked about the hardship endured by his ancestors, and how food killed by one was food for everybody. He compared the obstacles and challenges of his forebears—and their sharing nature—with the torch relay, which too was founded on the notion of giving to many. “For that reason, I can’t think of a better place for the torch to visit,” the young man said.

  There had been a strong expectation among some that Aboriginal Canada would reject the Games or use them as a platform to trumpet their causes—an expectation I never quite understood. We decided early on to embed Aboriginal participation in the relay and treat their communities like any other.

  One of my favourite moments happened in Quebec City, where the torch had arrived to a particularly hideous reception by Mother Nature. It was deadly cold and wet, yet thousands lined the route. Plans to carry the torch in a canoe had to be scotched because of the weather. Eventually, the torch ended up in Lévis, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec City. We took the 15-minute ferry ride to Lévis, which caused some mayhem as hundreds of passengers scurried to grab a photo of themselves holding the lantern. There was a celebration in Lévis, and everyone spoke French, which made my presence on the stage superfluous, so I wandered out into the crowd for a bit.

  I eventually found myself standing beside a dignified-looking Aboriginal man, probably 75 or 80 years old. He was with his wife and several grandchildren and seemed to be mesmerized by what he was watching. Luckily for me he spoke three languages, including English. “What do you think?” I asked him. He told me how he had driven almost 100 kilometres in horrible weather to be there. And without taking his eyes off the cauldron burning onstage, he said, “I never thought I would live to be old enough to see our people involved in something like this.”

  What a moment that was.

  But it wasn’t always smoot
h sailing when it came to the torch’s journey in Aboriginal communities. We were warned that our plan to bring the torch onto the Kahnawake reserve outside of Montreal was going to be met with resistance if we insisted on having our RCMP torch security detail there too. RCMP officers ran alongside the torch everywhere it went. The RCMP was our partner and did an outstanding job, but getting the torch onto the reserve was important to me. It was going to be run by Alwyn Morris, the Mohawk and Kahnawake resident who had won gold and bronze medals at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 in two-man canoeing.

  The Mohawk leaders had told us we would have nothing to worry about if we left the RCMP behind for this part of the journey. They were just not welcome there. We had a dilemma: pass on Kahnawake or go in without the RCMP as the elders insisted. Adam Gray, a young VANOC executive from Australia with lots of Games savvy, was caught in the middle of all this. I said to him over the phone: “Adam, you have to understand one thing: the flame is bigger than everyone, so everyone has to get off their high horse so this can work. And everyone needs to look at this through the lens of the children living on the reserve.” The word of the Mohawk leaders was good enough for me.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  The RCMP didn’t like this idea one bit. They thought any decision to leave them out of this portion of the relay diminished their authority and would damage team morale. Worse, it would be unsafe. Pretty soon a conference call was being arranged with Bud Mercer, head of security for the Olympics, RCMP deputy commissioner Gary Bass, Dave Cobb and a few others on my team. It was mentioned that if we went on the reserve without a police escort, the RCMP couldn’t guarantee our safety. But the Natives have already guaranteed our safety, I said. “Guys, think about this. If we go in there and get into trouble and someone gets hurt and they put the flame out, what does that say about them? You don’t think they care about the implications for their own reputation? They want this to work too. They have children and dreams and hopes like us.”

  I told them no one loved the RCMP more than me, but in this case I had to disagree with their opinion. We may not bring everybody on for this portion, but the flame is going on that reserve, I said. Anyone worried about their safety is free to stay back.

  And the flame did go on the reserve, where it was a huge success. The Mohawk leaders did everything they said they would, and hundreds of kids got a chance to see the flame as it ran by in Alwyn’s hands, a moment they would surely talk about for many years.

  The run through Kahnawake was one of several days the relay spent in la belle province. Quebec was always a crucial player in our Olympic vision. Without French Canada, we wouldn’t realize our dream of truly making these Canada’s Games. It just wouldn’t do to have everyone on board but not the second-largest province in the country. That is why I set about early to get Premier Jean Charest onside.

  I told Charest in a meeting in 2005 that Quebec was the perfect partner for VANOC because of its culture of winter sports excellence. It had produced great Winter Olympic athletes, and it was likely that several Quebecers would win medals in Vancouver. I even suggested that we were exploring the idea of having the torch make an appearance in some of the legislatures in the country— and we thought Quebec’s would be a natural. Although he liked the idea, Charest joked about bringing a torch into a place renowned for its passionate rancour. “Someone in here might try to use it to burn the place down,” he joked.

  There would be many more meetings over the next several months. But Jean, who was a former federal minister of sport, was ultimately an easy sell on the value of having an association with us. In October 2005, Quebec was the first province to sign a cooperative agreement with VANOC that pledged a partnership on everything, including sport, culture, economic development and volunteers. It was the first of similar deals we inked with the other nine provinces and three territories, which provided us with cash and other in-kind contributions. In exchange, they would have their own day at the Games during which the wonders and attributes of the respective province or territory would be promoted.

  ON DECEMBER 10, 2009, we took the flame to Parliament Hill. I had been to the House of Commons many times during Question Period and was always struck by how mean-spirited it was. MPS yelled at each other all the time. If anything killed my appetite for a career in politics, that was it. But I thought the torch, if we could get it in there, might change all that, if only for a moment. If nothing else, we could get parliamentarians to stop, stand and let the flame do its thing. For a few seconds at least, the House would not be so divided, and the whole country would see images of what the flame could do in a place where tempers often flared.

  Organizing the mission was not easy. One of our problems throughout had been reading Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s enthusiasm for the Games. It was frustrating to try and figure him out. I was not sure his advisers had fully embraced the Olympics, and he seemed to be holding back a bit himself. And the opposition Liberals were immediately suspicious, thinking the government was behind the torch visit and that it was designed to make the Conservatives look good. I had to explain to Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale that we weren’t selling out to the Tories or anyone. This was about the country. Once we got House Speaker Peter Milliken to quarterback the torch’s appearance on the Hill, suspicions seemed to ease and the stage was set.

  Then the question became who would carry the torch. There was talk of asking the prime minister, but it would look too political and he might well have declined. So we chose Barbara Ann Scott, the figure skater from Ottawa who had won a gold medal at the 1948 Winter Games in St. Moritz. I tracked down the woman dubbed “Canada’s Sweetheart” at her home in Florida and talked to her husband, ex-NBA player Tom King. When I got her on the phone initially she thought my call was some sort of hoax. Eventually she realized it wasn’t and was honoured that we were asking her to do something so historic—it would be the first time an Olympic torch had been in the House of Commons.

  That day Peter Milliken held a little reception in his office before the big moment. Soon we were standing outside the doors of the chamber itself. I held the lantern that we used to light Barbara Ann’s torch, and the next thing we knew the doors to the House were being opened for her entrance. “This is going to be the most amazing thing you’ve ever done,” I whispered to her before she walked in. “Enjoy it.”

  She was a bundle of nerves.

  Her appearance was truly one of the highlights of the run-up to the Games. Members of both sides of the House were on their feet, clapping vigorously. Peter Milliken read into the record what had happened, one of the rare times that people other than elected politicians were allowed on the floor of the House. There were camera crews all over the place, recording the moment. I stood off in a corner, watching. The politicians broke into a chorus of “Go Canada Go! Go Canada Go!” After it was over, I ran into veteran political reporter Tom Clark from CTV, who told me it was one of the best moments he could remember in his long career covering the Hill.

  Barbara Ann looked joyous, absolutely loving the spotlight. “Imagine an 81-year-old gal being asked to carry the torch into the Parliament Buildings,” she would tell reporters. Imagine, indeed.

  There were many more highlights as the torch made its way across the country. Toronto gave it a huge reception, as expected. Ditto Montreal and Winnipeg. I spent Christmas with the torch team and their families in London, Ontario. Instead of taking Christmas Day off, we decided to visit a children’s hospital and bring the torch along. It made the kids’ day and put smiles on the faces of everyone, including my teammates.

  ONE OF THE MORE poignant stops along the way was in Mortlach, Saskatchewan, on January 10, 2010.

  Mortlach was the small prairie town of a few hundred people in which Jack Poole was born and raised. Originally, Jack was supposed to run here, over his early objections to the idea. In producing our board chair, the town had made a major contribution to the Games and this would be a way to give something ba
ck. Jack eventually agreed and was starting to look forward to the idea when his cancer returned. After he died, I thought it would be great if Darlene could run in his honour. She agreed.

  Mortlach looked very much like the town Jack had always described: a weather-beaten, Depression-era prairie town that didn’t boast much in the way of modern amenities. Jack had had an enlarged black-and-white picture of the town’s main drag on his office wall, showing a solid string of old clapboard houses. It reminded me of a village in Ireland we used to pass through called Inch. Blink and you would miss it. What it had in spades was heart, spirit and work ethic.

  It was bitterly cold under a blue sky as Darlene ran the last lap of the relay up to the steps of the local school, where a special tribute was held and a cauldron lit. Darlene fought back tears as those in attendance gave her a long, heartfelt round of applause. Darlene spoke, telling the spectators, including some of Jack’s friends who had flown out from Vancouver, that her husband had remained a prairie boy at heart, which is why it was important for her to bring the torch to Mortlach. She had taped a photo of Jack to her torch.

  “He had to run with me,” said Darlene. “This was his time. I couldn’t run it alone so he helped.”

  Jack’s oldest daughter, Gwen, was also there and said a few words. I told the crowd about how Jack often spoke about Mortlach in the many conversations we had had over the years. I knew how important the town was to him. Afterward we walked around the village. We saw inside the house where Jack grew up with no electricity and no running water. We all shook our heads and marvelled at how far Jack travelled from his humble beginnings.

  Form Mortlach, the relay continued its journey westward. Calgary was another highlight, a homecoming of sorts. We arrived late in the day and were greeted by tens of thousands of people, many of whom who were wearing jackets and torch relay track suits from the ’88 Games. My friend Frank King, the Calgary Games president who so generously had shared his thoughts and experience with me, was there cheering madly. It was great to see him.