Flame heads to N.B.
Published Friday October 16th, 2009
Torch ceremony Nov. 23 will be first event held at new City of Moncton stadium
By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff
The Olympic torch will soon be arriving in New Brunswick, and before it leaves to finish the rest of its record-breaking 45,000-kilometre (27,000-mile) relay through Canada, it will make a very special stop at the Stade Moncton 2010 Stadium on the Université de Moncton campus.
GREG AGNEW/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT
Ceire Storey, a member of the French Connection club at Harrison Trimble High School, holds an Olympic Torch yesterday at the school. The club’s 19 students and one teacher are one of the few school groups in Canada that get to run with the Olympic Torch Relay later this fall.
The City of Moncton's Jillian Somers said yesterday the torch's arrival in Moncton will also serve as the inaugural public gathering at the stadium, which is being built to host next July's 2010 IAAF Moncton World Junior Track and Field Championships. Construction is ongoing, but Somers said the venue will be in fine form to host a significant community celebration on Nov. 23.
Somers, who made her comments as next September's planned Toronto Argonauts home game at the stadium was officially announced yesterday, said the city was not prepared to release precise details of the ceremony, but that it would be a spectacle packed with entertainment.
That was just some of the excitement yesterday surrounding the local arrival of the Olympic Flame next month, 25 days after it first arrives in Victoria, B.C. and makes the mother of all roundabout journeys to as far north as Alert and as far east as St. John's before crisscrossing all the way back to Vancouver for the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics on Feb. 12.
By the time billions watch the torch light the Olympic cauldron at B.C. Place, it will have been carried by 12,000 people, welcomed in over 1,000 communities and passed within a one-hour drive of more than 90 per cent of the entire Canadian population.
Harrison Trimble High School teacher Michelle Boudreau and 19 students from her French club have been selected by torch relay sponsor RBC through the Canadian Olympic School Program as torchbearers. Harrison Trimble is the only school in the Maritimes, and one of only 16 schools across the country, to be awarded the honour.
"I'm thrilled to death for them. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," HTHS principal Steve Mitton said last night. "It's living history."
Through the Canadian Olympic School Program, which brings the Olympic Spirit to classrooms across Canada, teachers, coaches and school leaders were given the opportunity to help create a better Canada by working with their students to submit a team pledge that chronicled how they were going to improve their community, be more environmentally friendly, or live healthier lifestyles.
Boudreau and her French Immersion students submitted a pledge to visit the Club d'Age D'or across the street from the school and clean the yard and surrounding lot. They have also arranged to help the senior citizens during the winter season by shovelling their three emergency exits for them.
The HTHS contingent will be among 630 New Brunswickers carrying the torch,
Also among them will be Mark Whiteway, whose Olympic journey started last November when the call went out for applicants.
First he applied and didn't expect to get picked. Then he heard he had been pre-selected and was asked to provide more information for further consideration. Next he heard he'd made it to the next round of the lottery picking those lucky Canadians who would get to carry the Olympic torch. And just last week, Whiteway discovered he'd be carrying the Olympic flame through Borden, P.E.I.
"It's exciting to even get picked," he said yesterday. "I applied thinking the chances of getting selected would be impossible."
As the City of Moncton's deputy treasurer, you might have thought he'd have got a chance to carry the torch past Moncton city hall -- or indeed to get near the new City of Moncton stadium, but the thousands who applied and didn't get selected make Whiteway feel he's done well to at least get to run along the leg he listed as his first preference. That leg is Day 25 of 106, when the flame travels from Summerside to Moncton.
For that, he said, he's more than willing to drive across the Confederation Bridge with his wife and children on Nov. 23, so they can watch Dad cover just 300 metres of the torch's long Canadian journey.
While he is indeed a fit, recreational runner, it was random drawing rather than a recognition of athletics that earned him his coveted chance to run with one arm held high.
"My wife's the real runner," he said. "She's a marathoner. It was her idea to apply, but she didn't get picked."
The relay was open to all Canadians and there was opportunity during the selection process for people with special physical needs to be accommodated.
Torch Relay officials with the Vancouver Olympic Committee are not releasing precise street-by-street details of where the torch will be carried through larger cities until about two weeks beforehand. That means it's not exactly clear where the torch will be in Moncton, but for the smaller communities of southeastern New Brunswick, its general route is well known from the provincial map of the route that has been released.
The torch will enter New Brunswick at the Confederation Bridge and make its way to Cap-Pelé and Shediac. It will then be borne across country to Memramcook and Sackville, and then back to Dorchester. It will make its way through the Memramcook Valley to Dieppe and Moncton and finish its day at the Stade Moncton 2010 Stadium.
The next morning it heads to Saint John via a route that takes it through Riverview, Hillsborough, Riverside-Albert and Alma, before going through Fundy National Park to Sussex and joining Highway 1 to Saint John. The following day, it travels to Fredericton and then takes a day off. On November 27, it will travel to Bathurst and from Bathurst to Edmundston on Nov. 28. It leaves New Brunswick the next day.
Flame heads to N.B.
