Losing is less complicated than winning, as failure is a lot easier than success. With winning comes greater expectations, while losing exists in a vacuum. For what seems like forever, Canadians were used to losing, but the expectations of 2010 have forced us to looked beyond. Whether this is entirely a good thing is another matter.
By Dave Bidini, National Post
Losing is less complicated than winning, as failure is a lot easier than success. With winning comes greater expectations, while losing exists in a vacuum. For what seems like forever, Canadians were used to losing, but the expectations of 2010 have forced us to looked beyond. Whether this is entirely a good thing is another matter.
In Tuesday's Globe and Mail, Ian Brown wrote of the redundancy of the medal count, and how strong medal showings suffer because of our country's new lust for winning. He's right, of course, but the argument clouds reality.
While people who remember the sweet singular triumphs of Kathy Kreiner or Gaetan Boucher understand that a small victory can be as nation-defining as Own the Podium excess, it's also the cry of an older generation.
Young Canadians believe they are capable of more. Part of their job description is to reveal how inadequate their moms and dads were, and how cowering before the world is simply not an option. This was apparent in the sea of youth that coursed through Vancouver's streets, singing "O Canada," waving their maple leaf mittens and, generally, not taking crap from anyone, at least not on their turf. They were good hosts. Still, there was no doubting which country they supported or who the hosts were.
If this new sensibility was not easily revealed over the first week of competition, you could see it in parts of the Cultural Olympiad, especially at the Constantines' blistering show at Ontario Pavilion or at the Hal Wilner/Broken Social Scene Neil Young Tribute at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
Even though these sorts of events often suffer from a Church-of-Hero preciousness -- a true Neil Young tribute, it says here, should consist of a bar band kicking their amplifiers down a set of stairs -- that the accomplished Wilnerites were drawn to BSS's reputation shows you how far a lot of new Canadian musicians have come, and how fearless they are.
After the first evening -- there were two performances in total -- both Lou Reed and Elvis Costello pulled Metric's Emily Haines aside to tell her, in Jason Collett's words, that "when you sing, the light shines on you."
In the past, this would have been treated the way Ms. Kreiner's gold medal run would have -- a rare and exceptional moment, a small triumph for an entire music scene. But, in the end, it wasn't really news. Emily Haines's gift didn't need confirming from two legendary figures, because, these days, Canadian bands are supposed to be great. The idea of success is different for these players than it was for me. And the music, I think, will be stronger -- or at least should be stronger -- because of it.
A few nights later, it was the athletes' turn to sound the drum. I'd returned to Toronto after eight days in Vancouver -- scowling at the blizzard that was about to hit Southern Ontario -- and ended up watching Virtue-Moir's ice dancing long program from my couch, curled up with my nine-year-old daughter, gloriously awake past her bedtime.
As a kid, I'd been allowed to stay up, too, but mostly for hockey games, because, really, hockey was the only thing that Canada had any chance of winning. Awaiting the skaters' routine, we shivered nervously, wondering whether the two young athletes -- 20 and 22, respectively, easily the greenest competitors in the field -- would rise to the challenge, or fall prey to the pressures of the moment, as so many other Canadian athletes had in the past.
We all know what happened. It was an athletic triumph unlike any other: two Canadian kids, filled with promise and expectation, performing the most accomplished routine of their lives at the most important time of their lives. The moment was different for my daughter than it was for me, because it symbolized her generation's identity and attitude as a Canadian.
The skaters were closer to her age than mine, and she'll grow up in a time when our athletes will succeed more often than they fail. This sense of achievement may not be something that everyone can get behind -- it plays into the government's result-driven agenda and might shift the landscape of the country into something many of us will find dissatisfying -- but it's not going away. Some will not know how to navigate this new place. But I'm willing to let the kids show us how.
