2010 Olympic Tourch Relay

[schmenke]

Anyone seen it? Has it passed through your home town/hamlet/village? Has anyone participated?

It just passed by my office building (at 7:15 in the morning, adding additional chaos to the usual rush hour traffice :mark: ).

[Easy Drifter]

It was in our area for a couple of days but I didn't go.
It was in Midland just 10 k away, also Elmvale, Barrie and Orillia.
Big crowds.

[Mark in Oshawa]

It rolled through here in December, and I saw it go by. Kind of anticlimatic in some sense, yet, I receieved an email from my daughter in Nova Scotia who sent me a picture of her standing with the torchbearer when it came through Wolfville. To her, this was history, and yes, maybe it is.

I guess the older you get, the more jaded you can get, and I was downtown Oshawa for the end of day ceremony for a bit, and it was a big deal; but in the end, I wont get excited about the Olympics until the day before they start.

[edv]

Tomorrow morning it starts its journey a few metres from my house, so I suppose I should put on a jacket and go see it.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Tomorrow morning it starts its journey a few metres from my house, so I suppose I should put on a jacket and go see it.

As long as you don't strain yourself...lol. Don't want you to go all out and walk 5 blocks right?? I drove uptown to meet the torch as it came down into the center of town. I couldn't be bothered waiting in the cold that night, and I had to pick up my wife. The torch is something worth seeing, but it means something different to what you think. I think if someone famous had been carrying the torch or someone I knew, it would have made a bigger impact, but I am disappointed in the corporate schmooze and schmaltz that has been put around it. I get why, because it pays for the program, but when a guy like Brian Burke, the GM of the Leafs AND THE GM OF THE USA HOCKEY TEAM! gets to carry the torch, then I kind of get ticked off.....

[Easy Drifter]

Quite a few of the Torch bearers are celebs. The broadcast crew from CTV who are carrying the Olympics among them. One of the bearers in Midland was a senior corporate executive with Coke who flew up from Atlanta. Meanwhile several former Cdn. Olympic competitors got shut out.
If you want to keep the torch you carried big bucks to buy it.
Guess I am just too cynical.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Quite a few of the Torch bearers are celebs. The broadcast crew from CTV who are carrying the Olympics among them. One of the bearers in Midland was a senior corporate executive with Coke who flew up from Atlanta. Meanwhile several former Cdn. Olympic competitors got shut out.
If you want to keep the torch you carried big bucks to buy it.
Guess I am just too cynical.

That was my feeling. Too many people carrying the torch basically were people with connections to the sponsors. Bell/Globemedia made damned sure all of their "celebs" have carried it, and a lot of TSN/Sportsnet people have carried it. I can LIVE with that, but when the corporate schmoozers show up, I get a little miffed. The fact is 2/3 of the people carrying the torch were not "ordinary" Canadians that wrote letters saying how they would pledge to be better citizens or green citizens ( the whole thing is schmaltzy BS if you ask me ) but corporate weasels. How much greenhouse gas did that guy burn to fly from Atlanta to carry the torch for the Winter Olympics in a foreign country ( for him ) in a town he had never seen.

I am a cynic, and will be right up to the opening ceremonies...and I will forget my cyncism maybe for the length of the games...maybe.

[Firstgear]

When the torch came through here (no I didn't go) a couple of weeks ago, Eddie the Eagle (British ski jumper from the '88 Calgary Games for those who don't remember) carried it for a ways. It may have been more appropriate for him to carry in Calgary, but I thought it was a nice touch anyway. I didn't mind him carrying it even though he's not Canadian, because to me (and I think alot of others) he represents more of what the games should be.

Oh, and GO Cindy Klassen!! (had to get that in there seeing as she's from my part of town)

[Mark in Oshawa]

When the torch came through here (no I didn't go) a couple of weeks ago, Eddie the Eagle (British ski jumper from the '88 Calgary Games for those who don't remember) carried it for a ways. It may have been more appropriate for him to carry in Calgary, but I thought it was a nice touch anyway. I didn't mind him carrying it even though he's not Canadian, because to me (and I think alot of others) he represents more of what the games should be.

Oh, and GO Cindy Klassen!! (had to get that in there seeing as she's from my part of town)

I smiled when I saw they had the Eagle show up and carry the torch. It was like when they had Gordie Howe carry the torch down near Windsor too. A great example of sportsmanship and class.

Oh I am rooting for Klassen, Big time. She is the forgotten woman on the speed skating team with Nesbitt and Clara Hughes getting the spotlight.....

[schmenke]

Tomorrow morning it starts its journey a few metres from my house, so I suppose I should put on a jacket and go see it.

I saw it come up (north) on 8th St. and 7th Ave. downtown (by the Sandman hotel).... I guess that would explain the presence of all the police cars :uhoh:

[airshifter]

If it comes through my town I'll make sure to inform the bearer that they are very lost! :laugh:



Strange trivia.... When did the tradition of the torch bearer start and why?

[Easy Drifter]

Homeland Security would never let them across the border wth that flaming weapon of mass destruction. :D

[edv]

airshifter....I do know that the torch tradition was started by Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Games, But I do not recall why....undoubtedly propaganda-related!

[Hazell B]

I carried the Commonwealth Flame once for a few hundred yards, though I can't remember which year :mark:

Had to wear shorts.
Will not be doing so again :p :

[edv]

Well, the torch arrived in my town 30 min ago.

Here they are lighting the torch from some magical Quest For Fire thingy:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b166/edvedv/Misc/P1030281.jpg

..and here goes the flame with some lucky (or rich?) local (or not local?)

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b166/edvedv/Misc/P1030283.jpg

[Mark in Oshawa]

Cool shots. The torch relay is a good deal as long as people don't try to hijack the occasion to supplant their own agenda. Which of course, we see every Olympics. I am pretty tired of this crap.....but alas, it is part of a free society.

[Daniel]

Cool shots. The torch relay is a good deal as long as people don't try to hijack the occasion to supplant their own agenda. Which of course, we see every Olympics. I am pretty tired of this crap.....but alas, it is part of a free society.
Ah come on, you can't really say that pissing on the Chinese bonfire was the crime of the century though.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Ah come on, you can't really say that pissing on the Chinese bonfire was the crime of the century though.

Well, it would have meaning if it happened IN CHINA. Doing it in Norway or some place else ( didn't the torch go to every contient before landing in China?) doesn't really say anything meaningful. The Chinese didn't care. The natives ticked off with the organizers of the Vancouver Olympics are not those directly effected, they are just out for more dough for their "nations" even though the only connection they have to the tribes affected is the fact they are too natives. Internal Canadian politics about the state of aborginals has at times threatened the torch relay, but the one way for the natives to get taken seriously by white Canada is to NOT interrupt something as "wholesome" as the torch relay. Most tribes grasped that putting protests out in front of the torch relay just is like setting fire to the flag and using your dog to put out the flames....it riles people against you.

The Olympics may be a little corrupt on the IOC level, and how games are given out and paid for involves a lot of political chicanry, but the public wants to buy the myth that the Olympics once they start are more or less good, and messing with the torch isn't a good idea.