Go Team Canada!

I attended my first Olympic Games Friday afternoon at Dr. Losier Middle School.
The school put on a its own Olympic Games opening ceremony in honour of the real one in Torino, Italy, which opened the same day. Students carried an Olympic torch through the streets of Chatham to the school where more than a dozen classes pretended to be the representatives of nations such as Finland, China, Russia and Canada during the opening ceremonies.
“I have a few words I want to share with you,” Wayne Mullin, the school’s vice-principal said to the students.
“The Olympics are not about you and me. They’re about a world that has to work together. For this moment in time, we’re part of something bigger.”
I like that thought.
Legend has it the ancient Olympic games were founded by Hercules, you know, the big tough dude whose father was supposed to be the Greek god Zeus (talk about having big shoes to fill, eh?). As the centuries went by, the games fell by the wayside while people dealt with more pressing concerns, like war and such.
But in the late 1800s a guy from France named Pierre de Coubertin revived the games. Coubertin was just a kid when France was taken over by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Some people say Coubertin thought France lost the war, not because the French couldn’t fight, but because they lacked “vigour.” After looking around at the education systems different countries offered their youth, Coubertin decided it was sports that made a person vigourous and started a movement to get France more involved in sports.
Coubertin's actions didn’t inspire much enthusiasm among his countrymen, but he kept trying. In 1890 he founded a sports organization, Union des Sociétés Francaises de Sports Athlétiques and two years later, made his plans to revive the Olympic Games public. At a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris on November 25, 1892, Coubertin said
“Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true free trade of the future and the day it is introduced into Europe, the cause of peace will have received a new and strong ally.
“It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto, you will extend again so that together we may attempt to realize upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games.”
Little came of his proposal at the time, but two years later, Coubertin organized a meeting with 79 delegates who represented nine countries. He gathered these delegates in an auditorium and spoke to them about reviving the Olympic Games.
This time, Coubertin aroused interest.
The delegates at the conference unanimously agreed and the first modern Olympic Games opened in April 1896. The first winter Olympics opened in 1924.
The Olympics Games are still going strong and if the spirit and pride shown by Dr. Losier students and teachers proves anything, it’ll be going on for a long time to come.
Good for you guys. You did a great job and I had a lot of fun.
And though I wish the best of luck to all those competing, I have to end on this thought: Go Team Canada!