Courage and Pride

'Cause sometimes you feel tired,

feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.

--Eminem, "'Til I Collapse"

If Team Canada loses today, the sun will still rise tomorrow. Really, it will.

I'm not going to get into all the "our Canadians are better than your Canadians" b.s. that gets thrown around whenever these things are contested. I remember it from when the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series: our Latin Americans are better than your Latin Americans! Whatever. It's a hockey game. There's going to be a winner and there's going to be a loser. If Team Canada wins, hey, great. If they lose, it's not going to diminish the 2010 Olympic Games in any way for me.

These have been, without a doubt, the most amazing Olympics I've ever seen. Every biennial, we hear the complex and involving stories that lurk behind every gold, silver and bronze medal; perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking that this year's stories are more captivating and inspirational than any I can recall.

There are two in particular I'd like to highlight, and taken together I believe they put something as cosmically insignificant as a gold medal shinny game into proper perspective.

Two athletes will be taking home the Terry Fox award from this year's Games. (Aside: If you haven't heard of Terry Fox, stop reading this, right now, go here, and learn why he is a genuine hero and marvel to Canadians nearly thirty years after his death...why his mother was among those who carried the Canadian flag at the opening ceremonies...why his indomitable spirit lives in the heart of every Olympian and Paralympian athlete.) The two recipients of this year's award are Canadian skater Joannie Rochette and Slovenian skier Petra Majdic.

Everybody in Canada surely knows Joannie's story by now. Her mother died of a heart attack shortly after landing in Vancouver to watch her daughter compete. Rochette competed through what must have been agonizing emotional trauma, and emerged with a bronze medal. (Personally, I think she should have been given an additional medal for having to deal with the inane and insensitive questions, afterwards. Reporters who think tears are newsworthy really should be rounded up and shot, is my view.)

Majdic's story is not as well known, at least here in Canada. It should be. She crashed in a training run, breaking five ribs and puncturing a lung...and then raced again...and again...and again, first qualifying, then making the final, and then, incredibly, getting a bronze medal. Then and only then was she treated in hospital. How she even stood erect with those injuries, let alone competed against world-class athletes and emerged with a medal, utterly boggles the mind.

Of that medal, Majdic said "This is not a bronze. This is a gold with little diamonds on it." Having read and related to the story of Terry Fox, she said the eponymous award "means so much more. It's the greatest thing I ever had."

Petra--and Joannie--you exemplify the true spirit of the Olympics. I tear up every time I even think of either of you, and I admire you and your accomplishments. Thank you for displaying such fortitude and courage to the world.

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Much has been made of the paradigm shift in Canadian values that has accompanied these Games. In my view, it's not so much a shift as it is a reveal. We are, and always have been, a proud bunch. We're also modest, probably to a fault. Putting aside all my petty dislike for Stephen Harper, I cheered when he stood in B.C.'s Parliament and gave his blessing to an outpouring of national pride. That our Prime Minister felt he had to do this earned a poke from Tom Brokaw at the end of the (excellent) video that introduced Americans to their northern neighbo(u)r. But it was taken to heart: in my lifetime, I can't remember anything like the coast-to-coast boast and toast we've seen over the past two weeks. The bitching in true Canadian fashion about the "abject failure" of the Own the Podium program has given way to cheers as we have set a record for the highest number of gold medals won by a host nation at a Winter Olympic Games. Should the hockey team come through today, we'll have won more golds than any nation in the history of the Winter Games. That, to me, is an unqualified success. Vancouver, despite inevitable glitches and gaffes, has been a fantastic host. I expect these games will do wonders for the country...for its international reputation, which will henceforth be seen as a little less boring, perhaps; for tourism--believe me, the shots we've seen of Vancouver don't compare to being there!--and last but not least, for athletes in Canada and the world.

I'm proud to live here, in 'the True North, strong and free'. I'm proud to live in the same country as Alex and Frederic Bilodeau, Joannie Rochette, Haley Wickenheiser, Jasey-Jay Anderson, and all our other athletes, medal-winners or no. It's been a great Games.

Now let's cap it off. GO CANADA GO!