The big take-away is that everybody knew Canadians would rally around the athletes if hockey both for men and for women went the way it did: seven games against the Americans--growl--Sidney Crosby scoring the goal, and overtime. We all knew the Canadians would just rise up, jersey sales would go through the roof, and it would be an historic moment.
To be honest, the biggest surprise for me--which shouldn't have been a surprise--was the Cultural Olympiad, which included the torch relay and cost so little money. People have almost as much memory about the torch relay coming through their town as they do about the athletic components of the game. Everybody remembers when the torch came through. It came through my riding at the crack of dawn. It was actually ridiculous because it was dark, but there were school kids lined up at five in the morning by the side of the road in a dumping, awful Vancouver rain in January. I was standing there with them. They had their little red mitts and frozen cheeks and they were waving at the torch going by. They loved it. All those kids will remember it.
On top of that, we had the Place de la Francophonie, which was a $7-million investment by the Government of Canada over the course of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to have a French quarter during the games. As you know, bilingualism was a big part of the debate in the Olympics.
When I went to the Place de la Francophonie it was full every single night, and 80% of the people were anglophones, standing there and cheering, loving Roch Voisine, Stéphanie Lapointe, and all the great Quebec artists who were there. They were anglophones seeing French Canadian music for the first time, with Quebeckers standing up there with their brilliant talent, just strumming amazing songs. English Canadians were saying that it was unbelievable, that they had heard that on the radio out here. “Damn”, they said, “we have some pretty impressive people in this country”.
That surprised me, as did the Cultural Olympiad across the board, which cost so little money. You would go to a hockey game or the curling rink, come out and have dinner, and then want to do something to keep the party going. People had the opportunity to see Jim Cuddy, Dallas Green, and all these great groups: Canadian talent in a Canadian venue in a Canadian city before a world audience. It was absolutely the icing on the cake, and the smallest amount of money we spent on the Olympics was for the Cultural Olympiad. Everybody can tell you about a sport they saw, the torch relay, and the brilliant Canadian artists they had the opportunity to see for the first time.