There's nothing quite like the Olympic flame relay

MONT-ROYAL, Quebec -- There were a dozen of us on the bus Thursday, and by the time each of us got back on the bus we were something of a little family, bonded in the shared experience of running with the Olympic torch.

The temptation, of course, is to say, oh, come on. That's just corny.

The temptation is to observe further that the world we live in is broken indeed and the passing parade of the Olympic flame isn't likely to fix anything much.

But to ignore the crush of those who lined the streets on a snowy Thursday around this Montreal suburb just to get a glimpse of the procession, maybe even to touch one of the torches, is to deny the aspirational power of the Olympic flame and what it symbolizes -- the ideals the movement at its best moments stands for, in particular the notion that hope and peace and brotherhood are worth a chance.

"Wow!" screamed Mohamed Zakaria, who is 11 years old and was standing in ankle-deep slush and didn't mind that his feet were all wet and cold because that got him a chance to touch a torch before it was lit.

"It's beautiful," said Shann Leona, who is also 11. "Amazing."

"I'm very happy I can see it," Arielle Orvieto, who is 10, said, finally managing to say something after being initially awestruck at the sight of an Olympic torch right there in front of her very eyes.

It would be naïve in the extreme to believe the Olympics, and the flame relay that precedes each edition of the Games, could ever itself bring about world peace. Of course that is not going to happen.

It would be foolish as well to believe that the Olympic movement doesn't itself have issues -- the evidence there for all to see yet again amid the torch relay on Thursday, the International Olympic Committee re-allocating some of the medals Marion Jones had won while doped in Sydney in 2000, the U.S. Olympic Committee announcing the make-up of a panel charged with reviewing if and how the USOC could be managed better.

But all of that, when the flame goes by, is background noise.

It would also be naïve not to acknowledge that the relay holds a special place in our cultures. All of our cultures. There is perhaps no other initiative like the Olympic relay anywhere on planet earth, the symbolism of it immediately and profoundly recognizable.

Most people never make it to an Olympics in their lifetimes. But the relay gives everyone and anyone a chance to feel the feeling of being at the Games, the celebration of possibility itself -- while in their hometown, maybe even right there on their own street.

"Many more people experience the Olympic Games through the flame relay than ever do at the sports events themselves. That will vary from Games to Games but it can be as large as a factor of 10," said John MacAloon, the University of Chicago professor who is one of the foremost authorities on the relay and author of a forthcoming book about it, "Bearing Light: Flame Relays and the Struggle for the Olympic Movement."

Colorado-based executive Steve McCarthy, who directed the 1996, 2002 and 2004 relays and who has played a key consulting role in all other recent relays, including drafting a "best practices" manual for the IOC about relays do's and don'ts, talks about the "magic you see … on the side of every road we've been to."

He said, "It's almost universal, how people look at this … every kid, every parent, every street corner, every neighborhood in the world."

Television and the internet have made the spectacle that is the relay that much more accessible -- which of course is why it proved such a target for protests the last time around, before the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008.

There have been some tensions this time, in the 106-day relay leading up to the Feb. 12 opening of the Vancouver Games -- but they have been subdued in comparison to the arrests, the protests and the commotion that marked the Beijing relay.

That is in part because it's a Winter Games relay.

That may also be partly due to the fact that, unlike the Beijing relay, an international affair that bounced to locales such as Paris, London and San Francisco, the Vancouver relay has been confined to Canada (after being lit in the traditional manner at ancient Olympic, in Greece) -- and the message of the Vancouver relay, explicitly promoted here as a bid to unite Canadians in the spirit of the Games, has been taken earnestly indeed .

"It's such an honor for the country and for him," said Emily McMillin, 47, of Barrie, Ontario, whose husband Andy, 49, was running Thursday, torchbearer number 130 on the official chart.

"Super-proud of him," said son Robert, 16.

"So excited," added daughter Kate, 14.

Kevin Shaw, 41, a Domino's pizza franchisee in Blacksburg, Va., father of five, three of them under age 3, including a 1 1/2-year-old with Down's syndrome, went out as torchbearer 126. "You start to realize the symbolism and importance of this," he said after being happily mobbed by kids and parents clutching at him and his torch, some of the school-age children so whipped up they were even asking for Shaw's autograph on their bus passes.

Lyne Tremblay, 46, an archer from Magog, Quebec, had been part of the Canadian team in the Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008. On Thursday, she was torchbearer 127. And this, she said, was better -- more exciting even than the Paralympic opening ceremony in Beijing.

When you carry the torch, she said, you are at that instant the only person in the world with the Olympic flame.

Dean DiMaulo, 47, a wine buyer from Laval, Quebec, wore number 124. Running with the torch, he said, brought to mind "all the Olympic ideals -- the values, friendship, brotherhood, one world and one family." Running, he said, vividly summoned the images of "all the people who have carried the torch before, like Muhammad Ali, who have done such great things in their life."

He said, "I know mankind is capable of great things when it wants to sacrifice. I am very humbled by this."

The temptation is to go, oh, come on.

Not this time.

Instead: Congratulations, Dean, and Lyne, and Kevin and Andy, and everyone else. You did yourselves, your families and your communities proud. Way to go.