Five years have flown by since the city of Vancouver was bumping with the energy of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Our city was filled with lots of sunny days (causing issues with getting good snow on our local hills), crowded with the colour of blue (not the great waters but rather our volunteers aka “Smurfs”), and visited by plenty of spectators from all over the world visiting our great city during those two weeks.
UBC’s Winter Sports Centre, now known as Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre, was the venue for several of the men’s and women’s ice hockey games as well as the main venue for the 2010 Winter Paralympics sledge hockey event. We saw many ticket holders for those hockey events and athletes roam around our beautiful campus enjoying the sights and sounds of our great community. It was a great year for Canada making history for winning the most 14 gold medals at a single Winter Olympics beating out the Soviet Union that had 13 gold medals in 1976 and Norway’s 13 medals in 2002.
To bring the Winter Olympics to Brock Hall, the Fun Committee was formed with the approval of Registrar James Ridge. The committee consisted of many Brock Hall-ers including familiar faces of today – headed by Joel Kobylka with assistance from Leah Villalobos, Ly Dich, Mike Becir, Carla Da Silva, as well as Cheryl Tyler. Together the group organized fundraising for the event (pancake breakfast) as well as organized some great games influenced by the Winter Olympics. The competitive events during the BH Winter Olympics, as the event was later known as, were office chair curling, air hockey, and Wii bobsledding, as well as a contest for the best Olympic mascot with office supplies.
The Winter Olympics brought the fun of competition between co-workers as well as the togetherness of cheering for their home country’s teams as televised events were watched tv screens all over Brock Hall. It’s been very difficult to pinpoint another Vancouver event that brought that same energy to Metro Vancouver as the Winter Olympics had. There was a great feeling of pride was felt by many people not only by being a Canadian or living in Canada but also being a Vancouverite and being able to represent both our country and city. As one visitor said to me on the B-Line coming into UBC one day, “This is a great place! It’s so beautiful and everyone is so nice. You must feel so lucky living in a city like this.” Indeed I do.
