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Olympian travellers

I PARTICIPATED in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal. By participated, I mean I kept a seat warm at the Big O, along with more than 36,000 others watching a soccer match between Isreal and Mexico that ended in a 2-2 tie. I also sat through a boxing match at the Maurice Richard Arena, where Canadian flyweight Ian Clyde was defeated by Cuba’s Ramón Duvalón. And, like millions, I watched a grainy television broadcast of 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci becoming the first in modern Olympic gymnastics history to score a perfect 10.

But my definitive ’76 Olympics experience happened at a beer garden deep in the bowels of Stade olympique. This is where I transformed from being just another spectator at just another sports event into a highly sought-after source of local tourism tips. I was sitting with a friend, sipping a Carlsburg, when an older couple from West Germany sat down and struck up a conversation in broken English. With the passing of the Olympic flag from Munich mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel to Jean Drapeau during the 1972 closing ceremony, they had become inspired to visit Canada, and now they wanted to know everything about German-Canadiana. Spontaneously, I became their go-to guy, directing them to the Old Munich on rue St-Denis for schnitzel and the Goethe-Institut on rue Sherbrooke for culture, thus exhausting my germanic expertise. Then a party of three from Vancouver sat down, and the talk turned to Canucks vs. Canadiens, and the triumph of Team Canada ’72, which the entire table relived with gusto. One of the Vancouverites then had the audacity to suggest that his city would one day host the Winter Games. “Yeah,” I scoffed, “and Jamaica’s gonna have a bobsled team.”

Well, we were both right. And now that the opening ceremony in Vancouver’s 60,000-seat BC Place is less than four months away, I — and my vastly better-informed team of writers, photographers and editors — have compiled an issue’s worth of Olympic-themed destinations and activities for the ski, après-ski and non-ski crowd. So, if you don’t have tickets to the giant slalom at Whistler Creekside or figure skating at Pacific Coliseum, you can still head to Vancouver, Whistler, Calgary or Lake Placid to ignite your own inner Olympic flame.

Eric Harris