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Shelley Fralic 6 days ago
When I flew from Vancouver to Comox on Nov. 2 for the start of a 10-day northern adventure following the Olympic torch, my intention was to not only write daily stories for the newspaper and our website, but to do a regular blog that would feature those glorious details of our country that I knew would never fit into a daily file: The people, the land, the food, the animals, that Canadian pride. The daily column turned out fine, but the 'god is in the details' stuff didn't quite work, given time constraints and given filing difficulties in some areas. Too bad, as I could have written a book a day so rich were the stories. The tour ended for me on Nov. 12, when the flame and its entourage – including myself and four other members of non-Vanoc media – touched down in St. John's, NL, where the really big road show across the country set out on its three-month road trip to that waiting cauldron at B.C. Place Stadium on Feb. 12, 2010. My torch travels, rather like a mini-dress ...
Paul Bucci 12 days ago
Dear readers: I've just landed in Iqaluit, the third and last stop after Alert and Resolute Bay on Monday, but internet access is very limited so my blog is a little bit behind. I will be updating it as soon as I can so stay tuned.
Shelley Fralic 14 days ago
8:55 a.m. We got to sleep latelast night in Cold Lake, where an astonishing 10,000 townspeople in this town that shares itself with a Canadian Forces Base turned out at the local football field. Word is one of the local organizers went into the schools a while back and asked the kids what rock band they'd like at the celebration, and so it came to pass that Friday night in Cold Lake was home to not a little heavy metal. It's a 38-minute flight in blinding sunlight over ox-bow lakes and muskeg forests to La Ronge, Sask., our next stop, entering both Saskatchewan and central time, and during the morning briefing from torch relay director Jim Richards, he holds up a banner signed by all the kids in the community we've just left. It will prove no less touching in La Ronge, which turns out to be one of those places where the torch continues to spread its patriotic fairy dust, starting with a Cree blessing by a Lac La Ronge elder, and then a stirring a capella recitation of O Canada, in ...
Shelley Fralic 15 days ago
7:45 a.m. Yellowknife: It's comforting to see that our jet, dubbed Flight 2010, is sitting on the tarmac in the cold morning on Friday, Day 8 of the 106-day cross-Canada Olympic torch relay, but only day five into this 10-day leg across northern Canada from the Queen Charlottes to St. John's, Newfoundland. It's also comforting to be treated so special, driving right up to the jet, no fuss, no muss, no waiting, no shoe inspection. We have been cleared for security, of course, long before this tour began but there ain't nothing, believe me, like your own chartered jet. We're on our way to Grande Prairie, about an hour on this comfy AIr North 737 with its deft pilot and cheerful crew (with us the whole way) and we are told to expect about 3 C in our first Alberta stop, along with about -4 C in Fort McMurray and a cool -3 C in Cold Lake, which is where our day ends well after this thin northern sun has set. It's going to be a whirlwind tour in the province, but like everywhere else ...
Shelley Fralic 16 days ago
As Day 7 begins, as the flame makes its way Thursday morning in the back of school bus and then on to the chartered jet warming up on the tundra runway at Inuvik airport in the Northwest Terrorities, heading to Kugluktuk in Nunavut, you sit in the dark, even though it's 8 a.m. and watch the frost forming on the plane's wings before it take off, before the sun comes over the horizon and the Arctic stretches out in every direction, a frozen landscape so beautiful, so breathtaking that you can only stare at its whiteness, your forehead pressed against the cold window. And you think, as you head for what will prove to be yet another magical day with these Canadians, and this Canada, that you had never before known, that we are really united in our patriotism, really no different, no matter our postal code. You about the day's column that you will write, and about all the things that you just couldn't squeeze in. And you chuckle because you want to tell Canadians, especially the ...
