Red Deer’s 2019 Canada Winter Games turned from a hopeful vision to an exciting reality when the torch was officially lit today from the Eternal Flame on Parliament Hill.
Red Deer cross-country skiing athlete Owen Pimm, 16, was chosen to light the Canada Games torch at 11:45 a.m. MST from the Ottawa monument. At the same time, Canada Games flags were raised across the country in past host communities.
“It was a very emotional moment,” said Lyn Radford, chair of the 2019 Canada Winter Games committee. While she’s stood on Parliament Hill before, Radford said being part of the torch-lighting ceremony on a sunny, but brisk Thursday in Ottawa has made the spot “even more significant for me now.”
Pimm was chosen to be the first to light the Canada Games Roly McLenahan Torch “because we wanted an Alberta athlete from Red Deer who was a Canada Games hopeful and Owen fit all three categories,” Radford added.
The Grade 11 student from Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School, who has been cross-country skiing since age two, said it’s an honour to be chosen among so many worthy local athletes.
Pimm admitted it was a “surreal moment” to reach across the Eternal Flame with a tiki torch and transfer some fire to the Games torch being held by Canada’s Minister of Sport, Kirsty Duncan.
As a crowd of 200 onlookers — including many MPs — cheered, the federal minister then officially handed the torch off to Red Deer Mayor Tara Veer.
Veer announced that she was “incredibly proud” of a community effort that was started many years ago.
The point of hosting the 2019 Canada Winter Games wasn’t just to bring fellow Canadians to Red Deer, “but to bring the unifying spirit of sport to the rest of Canada,” said Veer.
The mayor noted this first cross-country torch relay, which will cover 10 provinces and several territories, is “historic” as it enables other parts of the nation to share in the Games excitement. “The Canada Winter Games belongs to the whole country, we are just the hosts,” she added.
Veer passed the torch to Tom Quinn, chair of the Canada Games Council, who, in turn, handed it to Red Deer’s own Ron MacLean. The CBC hockey commentator is an honorary co-chair of the 2019 Canada Winter Games along with his wife Cari.
In commemoration to the Indigenous land Parliament Hill sits on, McLean then handed the torch to Elder Dan Ross, a member of the Algonquin tribe. Ross passed the torch to Randy Mowat, vice-president of marketing for MNP, the local corporation that’s sponsoring the first cross-Canada Canda Games torch relay.
Radford said the torch was usually lit in Ottawa and taken directly to the city hosting the Games. But for the first time this year, the torch will be taken across Canada before it comes to Red Deer to officially start the Games on Feb. 15.
On Thursday, the torch ended up in the hand of Ontario athlete Christian Gaudet, who ran the first kilometre with it, taking the flame off the Parliament Hill grounds.
The Games torch will next be flown to Halifax for the East Coast leg of the relay. Radford said it won’t appear in Alberta until January.
By the time it gets to Red Deer, 300 torchbearers will have carried it around their communities.
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