The winter Olympics began this week in Vancouver. I watched the opening ceremony, which presented a series of vignettes celebrating Canadian history and culture. (I learned that Canadian culture is principally rooted in landscape, weather, and political correctness.) Some of the segments had a regional focus, and my sentimental favourite was the one for Toronto: a crowd of leather-clad, tatooed dancers were milling about and then a car drove onto the field, horn blazing and digitus medius raised in triumph, and ran over a few of them. That’s us, alright.
Anyway, I thought it might help me to get into the Olympic spirit if I watched some highlights from Olympic competitions gone past. If you are also in need of an Olympic-spirit booster, check this out:
All Manner of Thing 
February 15, 2010 at 8:05 pm
We skipped watching in favor of playing a board game but I understand that there were also whales representing our country to the world. Sadly, I’ve only been witness to Toronto traffic in my 30 years as a Canadian and have so far, not seen a whale.
February 16, 2010 at 12:10 am
They have whales near Vancouver, or so I am told. I thought they might show the whales eating some baby seals, but I was disappointed. Still, the whales were pretty cool.