Crowds lined the streets of Toronto to watch the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Flame Relay pass through on the way to Vancouver. It is quite the operation keeping the flame on track, closing streets, and keeping the crowds under control. It certainly takes a lot of police including squad cars, police on bikes and even some police on horseback. In the photo above the relay runner enters Nathan Phillips Square surrounded by police, relay organizers and happy fans.
Up at York Mills I watched the transfer of the flame from one torch to another as it continued onto the World's longest road - Yonge Street, and headed south into the downtown core of Toronto.
A protest caused about an hour delay near Yonge-Dundas Square with a last minute change in route until finally the flames could be seen approaching Nathan Phillips Square. The people burst into cheers as the Olympic Medal winner in hockey - Vicky Sunohara turned into City Hall.
Sponsors were handing out some cool stuff like Coke's illuminated Coke bottle and aluminum bottles of their refreshing colas. RBC was distributing bins and bins of small blue tambourines.
There were plenty of media recording the event and I ran into CP24's gorgeous Ann Rohmer. UPDATE: Ann is leaving as host of CP24 Breakfast in mid-June 2010. She will remain on air for Animal Planet and also Animal House segments on CP24. It must have been hard to get up so early in the morning for so long but I did like to watch her on the show.
City Hall was packed with skaters, sponsors and people of all ages enjoying the spectacle of the Olympic Flame, the entertainment and the fireworks (see my YouTube video of the fireworks) which closed the show.
I will meet with the General Motors vehicle convoy, which supports the Olympic Flame Relay, this Saturday. It was great - see my blog post of the event here.
UPDATE: Feb 23, 2010, my flame photo is used on the Journalism Ethics website with permission.
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