When We Were One

The book hasn't been opened in who knows how long.
But there it sits on a shelf in my living room, the three words in its title a tangible reminder of a remarkable two weeks 20 years ago, when Canada proudly opened its door to the world perhaps like never before.
Calgary 1988. It was our first try at being Winter Olympics hosts (we'd done the Summer Games thing 12 years earlier in Montreal) and did those warm Albertans ever pull it off just right. Those Olympics raised the bar to new heights and, if you ask the fortunate folks who go to these things on a regular basis, maybe only Lillehammer 1994 has surpassed it since.
Think of those Games and names like Katarina Witt, Alberto Tomba, Brian Boitano and Canadian heroes Brian Orser, Liz Manley, Karen Percy and Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall rush to mind. And, oh yes, who could forget the likes of Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team?
The Olympics, though, is also about a spirit, one that unites the world as one like perhaps nothing else. If you have been or ever aspire to be an Olympian, you know of what I speak. And nothing symbolizes that spirit much more than the flame that is lit the signify the launch of the Games and isn't extinguished — always with a sense of sadness — when they come to a conclusion.
That flame is something Canadians from coast-to-coast embraced in the days and weeks leading up to Calgary '88. The torch relay became such a rallying point for a nation, even esteemed ABC commentator Jim McKay said he had never seen anything like it from an Olympic host country.
Rarely have I been prouder to say that I am Canadian.
No doubt, those feelings will spring forth once more in less than two years time, when Vancouver becomes the third municipality in the Great White North to become an "Olympic city." All of which serves as an introduction to the blog you're reading now.
During my years in the newspaper business, I was intimately involved in the coverage of many an Olympic Games. Always from the "home front," mind you, but the connection was clearly there. During my time at the Ottawa Sun, I profiled a number of Ottawa-area athletes who traversed all parts of the globe to realize the dream of a lifetime. Since Atlanta 1996, my commentary on the television coverage of the Games became a regular Sun feature (yes, I got paid to watch it all on TV).
Now that my career has taken a different turn, though, I felt a little bit like Brian Williams — all dressed up but without an Olympics to cover (Williams, you no doubt know, will sit out CBC's coverage of Beijing 2008 but will be CTV/TSN/Sportsnet's prime-time anchor for Vancouver 2010).
This blog, I hope, will fill a bit of that void.
Oh, and the name of that book?
It's the title of this blog.
Now you know why.