17 January 2010

Fanning the Flame

Canadian Pacific employees used a handcar borrowed from the Heritage Park Railway Museum to move the flame across the Lethbridge Viaduct - Steven Szabo 17 Jan 2010.

Lethbridge Alberta - After an auspicious and history-making arrival aboard an antique railway hand car, the Olympic flame wound through Lethbridge Sunday, lighting the imaginations of thousands along the way.
 
The 80th day of the cross-country Olympic torch relay culminated with a celebration at Henderson Lake Park where a boisterous crowd of several thousand cheered as Lethbridge's official torchbearer Jill Quirk lit the Olympic cauldron.
 
Only two hours earlier, four local CP railway men helped make history when they powered the hand car, while pulling the lit Olympic cauldron behind them, across the mile-long expanse of the High Level Bridge.
 
"It's never travelled in any other mode other than by a person holding it. It's the first time it's been moved by another mode of transportation," said CP Rail locomotive engineer Brian Lagace, who operated the car along with fellow engineer Gord Balderston, rail car mechanic Roger Brown, and track maintenance foreman Don Burla. Collectively, the four have 116 years of railway service.
 
Several hundred spectators awaited their arrival at the east end of the bridge.
 
"It was absolutely amazing seeing all the people, hearing them cheer, the emotion of lighting the flame on the other side (of the bridge) from the lantern that came all the way from Greece," he said. "That was pretty cool."
 
Clad in authentic 1910 rail worker attire and travelling at a speed of about eight kilometres an hour, the group took about 20 minutes to make the crossing and transfer the Olympic flame to torchbearer Chantelle Dubois of Calgary.
 
Lagace, a 31-year railway veteran, was elated after his first open-air crossing of the bridge and overwhelmed by the honour of transporting the Olympic flame. "It's so near and dear to my heart," he said. "(It symbolizes) people from all over the world getting together without guns in their hands, without their hands made into fists. They're competing in friendship and fellowship, and we need that in the world more than ever."
 
Gerald Gauthier.