McCusker Get Northern Kids Excited About Torch

McCusker Get Northern Kids Excited About Torch

Monday, October 05, 2009 at 12:10

Olympic gold medallist Joan McCusker is in La Ronge today to get local kids pumped up about the arrival of the Olympic torch relay in their community.

The sacred flame will be arriving in La Ronge by plane on Nov. 7, the ninth day of the torch relay, as part of a northern Canada swing.

Children at La Ronge’s Pre-Cam School and Senator Myles Venne School got to feel the weight and see the burn marks on a real Olympic torch, from the Games in Torino, Italy, and hear about the history of the Olympics.

McCusker, who won her own medal in 1998 as part of the Sandra Schmirler women’s curling team, says she is telling northern kids both about the symbolism of the Olympic torch as a flame of hope and possibility, and how they can draw inspiration from it.

“We need to talk about who achieves and why. I think we need to talk about celebrating the possible, and goal-setting, and that the people that go to the Olympics are not necessarily ‘special’ — they’re goal-setters, and they work hard. And so we need to really make the kids that they too could be part of something like this,” McCusker says.

After the torch’s stop in La Ronge, it will come through the other eight Saskatchewan “celebration communities” in January 2010, as part of the ground relay.