JUST WRITE!
Our PDP is showing
By Tracey Coveart/The Scugog Standard

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver started out poorly, even tragically. The shocking death of 21-year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on the first day of practice on a track that some competitors said was too fast. The embarrassing pillar malfunction at the opening ceremonies. The terrible weather and poor racing conditions on the slopes. Our Canadian athletes failing to medal after some $120 million was injected into the Own the Podium campaign.

But it didn’t seem to matter. At least not to us. In spite of the rain, the fog and the off-the-podium finishes, Canadians were still celebrating, filling the Olympic Village with crowds never before seen at a Winter Games and creating a sea of red, white and smiling. Canadian flags and banners and signs waved day and night. There were spontaneous - often tuneless and therefore all the more charming - outbursts of O Canada in the streets.

Public displays of patriotism (PDPs) from Canadians? Is the world tilting wildly on its axis or is it finally just righting itself?

When an American talks about Canadian fever on national television, you know something beautiful is happening. US speedskater Shani Davis told a CTV reporter that he was blown away by the unconditional love and support we were showering on our athletes. “I had no idea Canadians were so patriotic,” he said. (In all fairness, neither did we.) Even more incredible, he said that Americans - who wrote the book on national pride and elevated PDPs to an art form - have nothing on us. We beat the Americans at their own game!

Week one doubters were forced to eat some serious crow in week two, and by the time Team Canada beat Team USA in men’s hockey on the final day of competition - stopping a few hearts and helping to shatter several Olympic records in the process - Own the Podium had become Own the Gold Position on the Podium.

In Guelph, my son and his house buddies tied a Canadian flag to a hockey stick and stood on their driveway before the game, waving like fiends to a cacophony of honking horns. After our exhilarating win, they hit the streets for a victory lap but were forced to turn around because the downtown was clogged with revellers and closed to traffic. Losing himself in the crowd, Patrick said he had never been happier. In our Port Perry living room, we jumped around and screamed like a bunch of crazed lunatics - even though we’re not really hockey fans. (Oh, the shame.)

This scene was repeated in streets and living rooms all across Canada. And it wasn’t just about winning. Somehow our Winter Games transcended gold and touched something dormant at the core of us. We surprised the world and we surprised ourselves. The Olympic flame might have been extinguished in Vancouver on Sunday night, but it sparked something in us that could very well be perpetual in the heart of Canadians.

Time will tell if this civic spirit is indefatigable and if is transferable to other facets of Canadian life. Does this collective awareness of our significance extend, say to our military history? Recent local events would indicate that it does.

After a story about the sale of the largest collection of artifacts and memorabilia from Camp X appeared in The Scugog Standard last week (see follow-up story on Page 8 of this week’s paper), there has been an outpouring of support and offers of help aimed at keeping the collection right here, where it belongs.

The story has triggered a debate about the ownership of Canadian artifacts. If an item has cultural or historical significance, should any one citizen have the right to possess it privately or is there an underlying obligation that it be shared by and with all Canadians? If my father or grandfather left me a little chunk of Canadian history, should I be able to profit by selling it to the highest bidder, even if it means that it is lost to this country forever?

The Canadian in me says one thing; the single mom with mouths to feed and bills to pay says another. If we’re going to save the Camp X artifacts, we’d better do it now, while our newfound Canadian spirit is still soaring on Olympic wings.