Patriot Hearts (24 page)

I sat on the bed for a few minutes trying to digest what I’d just heard. Even though I had known this day was coming, I was still heartbroken and trembling. I couldn’t help thinking that Jack had hung on long enough to know that the torch had been lit and was on its way to Vancouver. It was okay for him to go now so he did. For Jack, the 2010 Games had started. His mission accomplished. His service fully rendered.

I had to make arrangements to get a
VANOC
press statement sent out, as the news wouldn’t remain a secret for long. I got Renee Smith-Valade, our vice-president of communications, on the phone along with a couple of others, and an hour later we issued our statement. The premier wrote his own. It would be a heavy, tearful day.

Gordon and I spent the plane ride to Vancouver sometimes talking about Jack, sometimes locked in silence. His experiences with the man were different from mine, but they went back decades. When we landed 10 hours later, there was a mob of media at the airport. The premier and I sat down to address them. I told the reporters, as did the premier, that the province had lost a giant and so had our Olympic team. I think those members of the media who dealt with me a lot could tell how rattled and shaken I was.

Jack’s funeral was held on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, and it was as close to a state funeral that a layperson gets in this country. Hundreds squeezed into Vancouver’s Christ Church Cathedral to say their goodbyes. He was described as a gentle, loyal friend who never turned his back on his small-town Saskatchewan roots. At Jack’s request, Dale Evans’s “Happy Trails” was sung at the funeral. That was just like Jack, poking fun at the situation.

Jack was remembered fondly as “the father of the Games” by Premier Campbell. Friend and businessman Peter Brown highlighted Jack’s fun-loving and mischievous side. Everyone agreed Jack had a way of lifting one’s burdens. I talked about how “he had taught us things not known to kings” and how Jack had convinced me to join him on this Olympic odyssey, saying that if I didn’t do it he wouldn’t either. “Like a three-year-old schoolboy I believed him,” I told the congregation. “That was the first of a thousand times I was to be Jack Pooled.”

WHEN JACK WAS
a young man making his way in the business world, he would buy himself a new shirt whenever he had accomplished something worth celebrating. His first boss had failed to reward his performance, something that always bothered Jack. He figured if he didn’t give himself a pat on the back once in a while, no one would.

Long after he had made millions and lost millions and made millions again in the development game, Jack would have one of the most breathtaking collections of fine shirts. After we started working together, Jack started to do the same thing with me—buy me a beautiful, expensive shirt after we accomplished something particularly noteworthy. He would call me on a good day and remark: “Almost a new shirt day, John.”

A couple of months after he passed away, I was visiting Darlene at the couple’s home in Vancouver. I wanted to see how she was doing. She left the room for a minute and returned with a box with a ribbon on it.

“Read the card first,” Darlene said.

It was from Jack.

“Darlene,” it read, “whatever happens, make sure you get John a new shirt for Christmas.”

It was written just days before Jack passed away. I sat in my car on Point Grey Road after that visit and sobbed.

BUT THERE WASN’T
much time to sit and ponder life without my good friend. Two days after Jack’s funeral, I was back at the airport boarding that armed forces plane for the flight to Athens to bring the Olympic flame back to Canada. The sense of occasion was almost magnetic. However, what should have been a time of unmitigated joy and excitement felt a little less so. I wouldn’t get over Jack’s death easily.

The ceremony in Athens was held at the Panathenian Stadium, which was built in 1895 for the first Olympic Games of the modern era, held a year later. Its coliseum-like design would become the model for modern sports stadiums around the world. The ceremony involved more actresses playing the role of high priestesses, carrying out ancient traditions with utmost seriousness. Governor General Michaëlle Jean was there for the handover, as was Greek President Karolos Papoulias. The flame that had travelled from ancient Olympia was eventually used to light a torch held by Spyros Capralos, president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, who then lit a torch I was holding. I was walking on a cloud, almost oblivious to all that was happening around me.

“Today we accept the Olympic flame with humility and respect,” I told the thousands in the stands. It was a beautifully warm evening. Soon my torch was used to light a single miner’s lantern. When that was lit I walked off the field with it, holding it high in the air to the delight of those watching. A picture of that moment became my personal favourite of the Games. And that lantern would become my number one memento of the Olympics.

Despite being completely exhausted, I didn’t get much sleep on the 10-hour flight to Victoria. I don’t think many of the others on the plane did either. Everyone was too excited to doze off, afraid they would miss something. It was all economy seating, save perhaps for the lantern and its siblings, flickering away in a row, strapped in seatbelts with
RCMP
officers on either side. I opened a few bottles of champagne so everyone could toast the fact that we were bringing the Olympic flame to Canada. At one point, we broke out in a chorus of “O Canada.”

We were a little behind schedule because international aviation law said the pilots had to spend 18 hours resting in Greece before they could get behind the controls again. This was after we had developed a problem with the plane on the way over and had to make a pit stop in Prestwick, Scotland. The layover law also now meant a stopover in Iceland on the way back for a crew change.

We were about an hour late landing in Victoria, where Gregor Robertson walked off the plane carrying the flame shortly before 9
AM
. The prime minister and premier were waiting on the tarmac to officially welcome the flame to Canadian soil. It was hard not to feel a sense of awe. We had a quick ceremony for the flame in an adjacent hangar, after which I drove into the city with the prime minister, who was just beginning to sense the scale of what we were doing. His presence added greatly to the occasion— validation that these were indeed Canada’s Games. A moment in time for us all.

The flame, still in the miner’s lantern, would make a grand entrance into Victoria’s Inner Harbour about an hour later aboard a First Nations canoe. The First Nations members accompanying it were dressed in traditional costumes and sang and chanted as they paddled. The lantern was then carried to the steps of the legislature, where it was used to light a cauldron, which stubbornly refused to ignite for a couple of minutes that felt like an hour. I whispered to Darlene Poole that Jack was once again having fun at her expense as she tried to light the cauldron. But light it did, and it was quickly used to ignite a torch that was jointly held by Olympic gold medallists Simon Whitfield and Catriona Le May Doan. The pair carried the first torch together before handing it off to Olympic rower and bronze medallist Silken Laumann of Victoria and Quebec-born diver Alexandre Despatie, who won a silver medal in Athens. We were on the road to Vancouver—106 days to go.

Day one of the relay was everything I had imagined and more. The crowds were monstrous, everywhere. Victoria and outlying communities completely embraced the flame’s arrival. The only blight on the day was a group of protesters who interrupted the relay’s progress in the city the first night. We had to divert the route a little, and a couple of people lost their opportunity to run with the torch. (We would find spots for them a couple of days later.) But the public reaction to the protesters’ antics was strongly negative and probably deterred other such groups across Canada from trying the same thing. Canadians were fine with protesters making a point, but they wouldn’t tolerate ruining people’s fun in the process.

My plan was to monitor the relay’s progress and join up with it here and there over the next 105 days. I would often get updates from the road from Jim Richards, and I also got my relay fix by reading media reports from journalists on the road.
CTV
’s Tom Walters did an amazing job, I thought, of capturing the joy and elation that the torch’s journey inspired throughout the Far North, from Whitehorse to Iqaluit.

Most people seemed to be surprised at just how welcome these small, mostly Aboriginal communities made the torch relay team feel when it descended on their towns. Not me. I knew that spirit existed when I first visited them years earlier. Everywhere I went, Aboriginal leaders had asked if there was any chance the torch could come to their town, never in a million years imagining it would. A little Aboriginal community called Kugluktuk in Nunavut had even raised $60,000 to build an Inukshuk and move it to Whistler. They gave it to us as a gift and it now stands outside the Whistler information centre.

One of the wonderful by-products of the torch’s journey throughout the north was the light it shone on the many problems that continue to exist there. I couldn’t help but think how the travails of our Aboriginal friends in the High Arctic cause us southerners no pain, because we don’t really know about them. So I thought one of the gifts we would eventually leave behind was the stories of these remote communities, the good and the bad. We also hoped to give the children something to dream about and aspire to.

Old Crow in Yukon may have been the ultimate achievement for the relay. On a per capita basis, I’m not sure any place in the country embraced the torch as strongly. It was incredible, from the moment the relay team’s Air North 737 jet descended on the town’s short runway. People stood on picnic tables and doghouses in their backyards, with cameras and cellphones to capture the historic moment. It was the first time a jet had ever landed in the town.

I remember reading an account of the day by Gary Mason in the
Globe and Mail.
In it he talked about a young man named Kyikavichik, who took to the stage to give an oral history of the Gwich’in people. Without referring to a single note, he talked about the hardship endured by his ancestors, and how food killed by one was food for everybody. He compared the obstacles and challenges of his forebears—and their sharing nature—with the torch relay, which too was founded on the notion of giving to many. “For that reason, I can’t think of a better place for the torch to visit,” the young man said.

There had been a strong expectation among some that Aboriginal Canada would reject the Games or use them as a platform to trumpet their causes—an expectation I never quite understood. We decided early on to embed Aboriginal participation in the relay and treat their communities like any other.

One of my favourite moments happened in Quebec City, where the torch had arrived to a particularly hideous reception by Mother Nature. It was deadly cold and wet, yet thousands lined the route. Plans to carry the torch in a canoe had to be scotched because of the weather. Eventually, the torch ended up in Lévis, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River opposite Quebec City. We took the 15-minute ferry ride to Lévis, which caused some mayhem as hundreds of passengers scurried to grab a photo of themselves holding the lantern. There was a celebration in Lévis, and everyone spoke French, which made my presence on the stage superfluous, so I wandered out into the crowd for a bit.

I eventually found myself standing beside a dignified-looking Aboriginal man, probably 75 or 80 years old. He was with his wife and several grandchildren and seemed to be mesmerized by what he was watching. Luckily for me he spoke three languages, including English. “What do you think?” I asked him. He told me how he had driven almost 100 kilometres in horrible weather to be there. And without taking his eyes off the cauldron burning onstage, he said, “I never thought I would live to be old enough to see our people involved in something like this.”

What a moment that was.

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing when it came to the torch’s journey in Aboriginal communities. We were warned that our plan to bring the torch onto the Kahnawake reserve outside of Montreal was going to be met with resistance if we insisted on having our
RCMP
torch security detail there too.
RCMP
officers ran alongside the torch everywhere it went. The
RCMP
was our partner and did an outstanding job, but getting the torch onto the reserve was important to me. It was going to be run by Alwyn Morris, the Mohawk and Kahnawake resident who had won gold and bronze medals at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 in two-man canoeing.

The Mohawk leaders had told us we would have nothing to worry about if we left the
RCMP
behind for this part of the journey. They were just not welcome there. We had a dilemma: pass on Kahnawake or go in without the
RCMP
as the elders insisted. Adam Gray, a young
VANOC
executive from Australia with lots of Games savvy, was caught in the middle of all this. I said to him over the phone: “Adam, you have to understand one thing: the flame is bigger than everyone, so everyone has to get off their high horse so this can work. And everyone needs to look at this through the lens of the children living on the reserve.” The word of the Mohawk leaders was good enough for me.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

The
RCMP
didn’t like this idea one bit. They thought any decision to leave them out of this portion of the relay diminished their authority and would damage team morale. Worse, it would be unsafe. Pretty soon a conference call was being arranged with Bud Mercer, head of security for the Olympics,
RCMP
deputy commissioner Gary Bass, Dave Cobb and a few others on my team. It was mentioned that if we went on the reserve without a police escort, the
RCMP
couldn’t guarantee our safety. But the Natives have already guaranteed our safety, I said. “Guys, think about this. If we go in there and get into trouble and someone gets hurt and they put the flame out, what does that say about them? You don’t think they care about the implications for their own reputation? They want this to work too. They have children and dreams and hopes like us.”