Olympic flame has 'transcending power': Ottawa torchbearer
source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010wintergames/Olympic+flame+transcending+power/23336...
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OTTAWA — Mark Tremblay was filling up his car at a gas station between Ottawa and Montreal last summer when he answered his cellphone and learned he was going to be a torchbearer for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
The location — a filling station — was almost comical for its irony.
More than 20 years earlier, as a graduate student at University of Toronto, he pedaled his bicycle from one gas station to the next, filling out entry ballots to try to win a spot in the torch relay leading up to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
"For my first undergraduate degree, I did a bachelor of commerce in sports administration," he explains, "and focused most of my term papers and such on the Olympics. I was a big fan of it.
"So when it was announced we were getting the '88 Winter Olympics, I was quite keen on it."
The lottery process then to become a torchbearer, he says, involved simply going to a Petro-Canada station — no purchase required — and filling out a ballot.
Tremblay didn't own a car, but he was fit — he ran marathons and triathlons then — and so spent every weekend riding his bicycle to every Petro-Can in the greater Toronto area, filling out ballots and entering.
"I even developed enough of a rapport with some of the employees that I was able to get more than one ballot sometimes," he adds, "and I can say with confidence that I entered more than a thousand times.
"I would have killed for one of those torchbearer jackets."
He'll be wearing one at 1:56 p.m. Saturday, as he carries the torch near Ottawa's famed Byward Market.
"If it was running in rural Saskatchewan, I'd be there for sure," he says. "For a chance to carry the torch? Oh, yeah."
Now a 48-year-old Ottawa resident and father of four kids age 10 to 18, Tremblay didn't attain his dream that year, although his love of things Olympic has scarcely waned over the ensuing decades.
He spoke at the Pre-Olympic Scientific Congress leading up to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and took his then-nine-year-old son Josh to the games Down Under.
Nor does it stop there.
"When I called and told my dad I was going to be a torchbearer — my parents are snowbirds in Florida — he immediately teared up and had to give the phone to mom."
Professionally involved in healthy and active living, Tremblay's selection to the crew of 12,000 torchbearers is fitting.
He's the director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research (HALO) at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario; chief scientific officer at Active Healthy Kids Canada; and professor of pediatrics in the University of Ottawa's faculty of medicine.
And he has the right attitude. Carrying the torch, he says, is symbolic of what is right in the world.
"It has this transcending power that inspires people. Twelve-thousand people will be carrying the torch. For some it will be a transient episode, but for some it may be life-changing, and there aren't that many things in the world that have that positive an aura around them.
"It's something that touches very deep into the soul about the importance of good in the world and striving for your best — trying hard and believing in yourself — and all these good things you want to convey to your children and the people around you. I think it's all captured in that."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010wintergames/Olympic+flame+transcending...
http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010winte...
The location — a filling station — was almost comical for its irony.
More than 20 years earlier, as a graduate student at University of Toronto, he pedaled his bicycle from one gas station to the next, filling out entry ballots to try to win a spot in the torch relay leading up to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
"For my first undergraduate degree, I did a bachelor of commerce in sports administration," he explains, "and focused most of my term papers and such on the Olympics. I was a big fan of it.
"So when it was announced we were getting the '88 Winter Olympics, I was quite keen on it."
The lottery process then to become a torchbearer, he says, involved simply going to a Petro-Canada station — no purchase required — and filling out a ballot.
Tremblay didn't own a car, but he was fit — he ran marathons and triathlons then — and so spent every weekend riding his bicycle to every Petro-Can in the greater Toronto area, filling out ballots and entering.
"I even developed enough of a rapport with some of the employees that I was able to get more than one ballot sometimes," he adds, "and I can say with confidence that I entered more than a thousand times.
"I would have killed for one of those torchbearer jackets."
He'll be wearing one at 1:56 p.m. Saturday, as he carries the torch near Ottawa's famed Byward Market.
"If it was running in rural Saskatchewan, I'd be there for sure," he says. "For a chance to carry the torch? Oh, yeah."
Now a 48-year-old Ottawa resident and father of four kids age 10 to 18, Tremblay didn't attain his dream that year, although his love of things Olympic has scarcely waned over the ensuing decades.
He spoke at the Pre-Olympic Scientific Congress leading up to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and took his then-nine-year-old son Josh to the games Down Under.
Nor does it stop there.
"When I called and told my dad I was going to be a torchbearer — my parents are snowbirds in Florida — he immediately teared up and had to give the phone to mom."
Professionally involved in healthy and active living, Tremblay's selection to the crew of 12,000 torchbearers is fitting.
He's the director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research (HALO) at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario; chief scientific officer at Active Healthy Kids Canada; and professor of pediatrics in the University of Ottawa's faculty of medicine.
And he has the right attitude. Carrying the torch, he says, is symbolic of what is right in the world.
"It has this transcending power that inspires people. Twelve-thousand people will be carrying the torch. For some it will be a transient episode, but for some it may be life-changing, and there aren't that many things in the world that have that positive an aura around them.
"It's something that touches very deep into the soul about the importance of good in the world and striving for your best — trying hard and believing in yourself — and all these good things you want to convey to your children and the people around you. I think it's all captured in that."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010wintergames/Olympic+flame+transcending...
http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/www.montrealgazette.com/sports/2010winte...
