Following Canadian Women Athletes to Vancouver

Canadian Olympic Committee
February 12, 2010

The Opening Ceremony

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games have begun, with a display of fire and ice. And it seems appropriate for these great Games that the Great One was one who fired it up. Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash, Catriona Le May Doan, Rick Hanson and Nancy Greene Raine were the final torch bearers, with Gretzky touching it last, taking it outside and bringing it to Vancouver’s waterfront to burn bright for the next 16 days.

Before an estimated audience of 3.5 billion viewers, the Opening Ceremony unfolded in a powerful display of nature and landscape inspired by Canadian painters and poets. First, four huge silver sculptures opened their arms to the world’s athletes as Canada’s aboriginal people danced and drummed in welcome. The biggest roar of the night came when the Canadian Olympic Team entered the stadium, its flag carried by Clara Hughes.

On giant flowing fabric and a floor blanked in white, you may have seen the blowing snow and the bluish tundra, from which a giant spirit bear emerged after shooting stars touched down. The audience’s flashlights and electric candles flowing and glowing into a circular starry sky. Then the ice melted and waters flowed, whales swimming across the stadium.

Massive shards of ice shot skyward, morphing into the bark of trees with the fabric above as green protective leaves. When darkness fell, a fiddler in a kayak saw his shadow on the moon, just before a frenetic party of fiddlers and tap dancers shook the night on a carpet of glowing maple leaves.

Dawn came and a man ran on blowing prairie grasses before floating skyward like a dream. After a storm of thunder and rain ceased, a mountain of snow rose. Red-cloaked snowboarders and skiers twisted and glided down it through the air. Roller skaters raced underneath.

In all, it was an amazing trip across Canada, to the peaks of mountains, the depths of the sea, and the vast Prairies — all through changing seasons and with poetry recited by renown actor Donald Sutherland.

Women’s hockey captain Hayley Wickenheiser was chosen to recite the Olympic Oath on behalf of all athletes. This was an incredible show, all in all, and with the confetti snow that rained down, one thing is certain: BC Place needs one really good vacuum.