Gold!

On February 11, Dara Howell made Canadians everywhere proud - she won a gold medal in the first ever slopestyle skiing event at the Olympics!

This past Friday night the town of Huntsville celebrated their hometown hero.  And what a celebration it was!  5,000 people crammed into Rivermill Park to celebrate Dara's victory.  Fireworks, music, and special messages from the mayor, MP, MPP, even the Premier!  But I'm jumping ahead of myself a little bit.  Let's start at the beginning.

Being a Huntsville station, LIFE couldn't miss this amazing local celebration.  I was the lucky representative who got to go.  It started out with a press conference where we got to ask Dara whatever we wanted.

Dara answering a question, and Dara with Mayor Claude Doughty

She then posed for pictures...

She let me hold the gold medal - it's heavy!  (notice her gold nail police...nice touch)

And perhaps one of the coolest parts of the evening for myself...

Then after all the picture taking, I got a chance to sit down with Dara and chat one-on-one.  What a cool, down-to-earth young lady.  She's only 19, so she's just starting out here career.  It's neat to see how much she loves Huntsville, and how excited she was to hit the slopes again (it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks!) . I'll try to post some of that interview here, but you can also here it on LIFE today at 4:45pm and 6:45pm.

Then it was on to the actual celebration...



Dara was just beaming as she was brought in on a fire truck, escorted by police and the RCMP.  She beamed every time she took them mic and spoke to the crowd.  And the crowd loved it - they loved her, the home town girl!  And perhaps the biggest honour - as a permanent memorial to Dara, the town is renaming the street in front of River Mill Park as 'Dara Howell Way'.  (She also got a very nice Audi SUV for winning her gold medal...not to shabby!)

I think though, that perhaps the best part of the evening was what happened afterward.  Dara promised to stay and sign autographs for everyone who wanted to meet her.  And she kept that promise.  The line was SOOO long..and 20 minutes later when I look back, it had not shortened at all...and then 20 minutes later again, it was still just as long...and Dara stayed and met every person and signed every autograph.  Classy.  And humble.

I'm looking forward to seeing more from this young Huntsville gold medalist, who is just full of potential.

Vacation

I was on vacation last week, an oooohhh, it was a good one.  I told my wife that the sign of a great vacation is all the scratches, cuts, aches and pains from all the adventuring.  I'm not usually a guy who can sit still for very long, I'd much rather be doing stuff.  Last week was a great mix of hanging out and being active.

I was at Muskoka Bible Centre (MBC) for the week.  That was great in itself because MBC is really a neat place.  They bring in speakers in the morning and evening, and Dr. Steve West from a church in Guelph was there last week.  Brilliant guy, taught me so much, I really enjoyed his messages.  Additionally, the food at MBC is ridiculously good (I gained a few pounds...).  And they have activities like canoeing, kayaking, volleyball, etc.  I took my own kayak, but it was nice to go canoeing with my wife and son.  So yes, MBC was awesome...

Here's where it gets really good.  I made it my mission to do lots of stuff while we were there - and we did.  In fact, there were a few things on my list that that I couldn't fit in!  The highlights - golf at Huntsville Downs, climbing a waterfall, ATVing through some crazy terrain, sliding down the Port Sydney rapids (which this year are flowing very high and fast), and perhaps the highlight - cliff jumping!  A 38 foot cliff that was absolutely awesome!  I have pictures and video of most of this stuff but it was taken by different people on different cameras.  When I amass it all, I will edit this post to show some of the adventures.  Oh, and we went into Huntsville and walked around a couple of times.

Thanks Huntsville and MBC, I had a blast!