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Colin's Column By Colin GRIMSON Monday is our day to eat out (breakfast at a little restaurant that serves bacon and eggs all day) and to do a little shopping. This week almost everyone we ran into wore a big smile and moved around with a lot of spring in their step, but that spring did not come from the sight of robins freezing while they searched desperately for worms crazy enough to venture near the surface. Definitely not. After the Canadiens finished the regular season atop the Eastern Conference, that spring came from the exhilarating feeling that we’re NUMBER ONE. Now, all the journalists who last September predicted an early start to the 2008 golf season for Les Canadiens, and who called for Bob Gainey’s scalp after his trade of Huet to Washington for a second round draft pick in 2009 are lining up to predict a return of the Stanley Cup to its true home — Montreal. As I write this column, the first round of the playoffs are still more than fifty hours away so I have to stick my neck out. I just hope that Les Boys won’t think the Boston Bruins have become accustomed to getting trounced by the Tricolours and have started to enjoy being their doormat. While Montreal has won the last eleven games against Boston and has been triumphant in 23 of 30 playoff series since 1929, anything can happen once the post season play begins. Star players can lose their scoring touch and nobodies can suddenly discover where the goal is and what the game is all about. I just hope... So where’s the torch? At least that was what everyone interested in the Olympics was asking after it disappeared onto a Paris bus after riotous protesters broke up the torch’s peaceable passage through Paris streets. And that was just a day after angry Tibetan protesters in London made a shambles of the torch’s peaceful appearance in the city that is home to the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster. Rather ironic, what? San Francisco, the only stop in North America, experienced a sort of hit and run appearance. The relay walkers (they didn’t run) kept hopping into vehicles that spirited them off to other, sometimes undisclosed, locations. The torch owes its place in the Olympic tradition to the ancient Greeks who kept a fire burning throughout the days of their Olympic games. This was to commemorate the theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus as an act of revenge for Zeus’ hiding of fire from humans. The Olympic flame was introduced to the modern games in Amsterdam in 1928 and the first use of a relay of runners to carry the flame from Greece to the site of the games was in 1936 — to bring the flame to Munich in Germany. Now, given the politics of the times, it would have taken a lot of courage for protesters to interfere with the celebration of the torch that year. The purpose of the torch relay since then has been to promote the games by attracting attention as it wends its triumphant way from Greece to the site of each Olympic games. Well, the 2008 version of the games is certainly getting a lot of attention. And what do the demonstrators hope to achieve? IOC President Jacques Rogge has already given some indication. He publicly reminded China that it signed an agreement in 2001 when the games were awarded to improve its human rights record. And China’s reply to Rogge? Butt out of China’s domestic politics! The next stop for the torch is Argentina, a country with its own human rights problems. By the time you read this column, we will all know the kind of reception it received. Any predictions on the red carpet treatment it will get in Asian countries like Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), and...Tibet? The big question for me is will it make it to Shanghai or be torchnapped and held for ransom long before then. The Bury Women’s Institute will hold a Flea Market and Craft Sale on Sat. Apr 26th, from 9 am. to 3 pm. in the Town Hall in Bury. Lunch will be served. To reserve a table call Frances Goodwin at (819) 872-3318 or Kay Olson at (819) 872-3662. The next 500 Card party at the Bulwer Community Centre will be on Thurs. May 1st at 2 pm followed by lunch and the distribution of prizes. Admission. Everyone is welcome to attend. The Compton County Historical Museum Society will hold its Spring Brunch fundraiser on Sun. Apr 20th at the Bulwer Community Centre from 11 am to 2 pm. The menu will include pancakes & maple syrup, sausages, scrambled eggs, home baked beans, scalloped potatoes, etc. Adults — $9, under 10 yrs — $4. United Church services for the next two weeks will be Apr 20th — Cookshire [9:30], and Sawyerville [11:00 in the manse]; and Apr 27th — Cookshire [9:30] and Sawyerville [11:00 in the manse]. Anglican Church services for the next two weeks will be Apr 20th— Sawyerville [9:15 am - MP], Bury [11:00 MP], and Cookshire [11:00 MP]; and Apr 27th — Sawyerville [9:15 MP], Bury [11:00 MP], and Cookshire [11:00 MP]. The next two issues of The Journal [with my deadlines in brackets] will be May 3rd [Apr 21st] and May 17th [May 5th], and I can be reached at 823-5583 if you have an event you wish to appear in this column. |
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