Olympic Celebration

By Mike Garvie

It’s been over a month since the Canadian women’s hockey team won Olympic gold, but for local defender Meaghan Mikkelson, the ore on her neck still isn’t any heavier.
Mikkelson and many other staff and athletes from the Olympic and Paralympic Team Canada squads participated in a celebration ceremony at Churchill Square in Edmonton at the end of March.

“It was amazing,” Mikkelson said, a product of the St. Albert Minor Hockey Association, former Edmonton Chimo and Wisconson Badger. “It’s great for the city of Edmonton to have all the (local) athletes and staff that participated in the Games, the fact they wanted to recognize us. It’s a huge honour to represent Canada and your hometown. It was a great day to see everyone to come out and show their support.”

Although the adrenaline was pumping before the women’s hockey team stepped out on the ice in their first round-robin game against Slovakia, Mikkelson credited the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) for its job in making sure all the athletes felt at home and had every need catered to.
And that’s before the fan support. In a speech on Tuesday, curling skip Kevin Martin said that he had never before had the sort of fan-base he saw in Vancouver, where a stadium full of fans in the 10th end of the final game started singing an impromtpu rendition of the Canadian anthem.
Mikkelson agreed that the city was unbelievable.“It’s so hard to describe. Standing on the carpet and being presented with all my teammates, all we’ve been through as a team and individually, the different paths we took to get there. Singing the anthem with them with gold medals around our necks, in Canada, nothing will top that.”
Perhaps former Poet Laureate Alice Major said it best though before the crowd dispersed:
“But now it is their glowing faces… Not the sheen of medals, but the beautiful, inebriating joy. It reminds us all of how the body goes beyond itself. Unfailing. Becoming soul.”

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