The only time Canada won no gold medals in the 102-year history of the Winter Olympics was in 1988 when it hosted the games in Calgary.
In the next five games, it won more and more gold: 2 in Albertville in 1992; 3 in Lillehammer in 1994; 6 in Nagano in 1998; and 7 each in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.
Then came Vancouver in 2010 when Canada won 14 golds, the most won by any country at a single Winter Olympics. We then won 11 golds four years later in PyeongChang. That fell to 4 golds in Beijing and 5 in Milano-Cortina last week.
Our overall medal count is also in steep decline: from 29 in 2018, to 26 in 2022, to 21 in Milano-Cortina. Worse still was to lose both men’s and women’s hockey, both games to the USA, and both by a score of 2-1. Ouch.
I’ve often said that Canada isn’t in the excellence business; we’re in the ‘pretty good’ business. We don’t need to finish first to feel good about ourselves. We just need to finish in the medals, proud to share the podium.
But the world is no longer friendly to such a view. In a winner-take-all culture, every nation but one loses. Being pretty good hobbles our future and leaves us easy prey to places who know the difference between gold and silver may be a hundredth of a second, but that’s a difference worth fighting for. Because in today’s dog-eat-dog world, unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes.
The very good news from this corner of the bedroom where I’m sucking my thumb is that we can change. Canada can Own the Podium because we’ve done it before. In 2005, fearing that Vancouver 2010 would jinx us as the host nation with no golds like we won in Calgary, Ottawa joined with corporate supporters and winter sport federations to raise $110 million over five years to make our best Olympians even better.
It turns out that lack of gold is a problem money can solve.
Last week, Globe and Mail columnist Cathal Kelly used the example of Norway, which topped the medal standings in Milano-Cortina with 41 medals (18-12-11), despite being a country with barely more than half the population of Quebec.
Norway has set up a state lottery where part of the proceeds are redistributed to Olympic sports.
Today, many of our Olympic athletes don’t even get to the training camps. When they travel, they sleep on friends’ couches instead of in hotel rooms. I know we take perverse pride in punching above our weight. But we’re a rich country for Heaven’s sake.
Canada’s Chef de Mission and former gold medalist, Jennifer Heil, “ listed some of the things she got when she competed back in the literal salad days – regular training camps, specialized training camps, ski waxing experts on staff, medical and physiological services, bio-neuro-feedback.”
These days Ottawa is funding all kinds of patriotic programs to remind us that our sovereignty is threatened in the north, and our nationhood is threatened by Alberta and Quebec whose governments seem to want us all to go our own way.
Whatever we’re spending on amping up our military, surely we can allocate a tiny thimbleful of that to our Olympic programs so that every two years we can turn on CBC and remind ourselves that we, too, can be worldbeaters.
Meanwhile…
1. You go right ahead. Next weekend, Rosemary Thompson will throw her body into the icy waters of Meech Lake, where she covered the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord for CBC in 1990. The Can Geo Polar Plunge is the annual fundraiser for The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Rosemary promised she’d carry a sign with my name on it, so I upped my donation. You can too.
2. Extreme facts: “Ukraine’s intense counter-attacks have pushed Russia’s death toll to more than 1.25 million – more than the total sustained by the United States during the Second World War.” Plus…extreme ways to combat over-tourism. And how muchCanadians hate the United States right now.
3. Luxury is drowning in ubiquity risk. In other words, when it’s everywhere, it loses its value and allure. Besides, wealth-porn long ceased being a good look.
Speaking of…cooking on a yacht for the rich is hard.
4. What caused the market to tank 800 points this week? Trump’s tariffs, of course. But also this Wall Street research report that predicts AI will run the economy not in some distant future, but “…Two years. That’s all it took to get from “contained” and “sector-specific” to an economy that no longer resembles the one any of us grew up in.”
Speaking of AI, are you mimetic or agentic? And can AI teach you to master yourself?
Speaking of why the U.S. Supreme Court decision is bigger than just tariffs, Robert Reichwrites: “It stops Trump from deciding not to spend money Congress appropriated, and from going to war without Congress’s approval.
5. “I need 8 hours sleep a night.” A junior New York banker insisted on that, which Centerview Partners first agreed to, then turned around and let her go. So she sued them, and they settled this week on the courthouse steps.
6. Own a cottage in Muskoka? Binged on Heated Rivalry? You’re in double luck. The BBC reports that Muskoka rentals this summer have more than doubled. Here’s the real lakefront cottage where Shane and Ilya snuggle up.
7. Guess what the new head of the ROM is? A Canadian! Nicholas Bell, from the Glenbow Museum in Calgary where he led their move to free admission for all. The ROM is Canada’s largest museum, with 18 million artworks, cultural objects and natural history specimens in 40 galleries, and over one million visitors each year.
And speaking of proud Canadians on the world stage, Toronto General Hospital used to be one of the top three in the world. This week, it became one of the Top Two – behind the Mayo Clinic and ahead of the Cleveland Clinic.
8. How…Jeffrey Epstein became a public intellectual…plus how brick walls snare pedophiles. And how to fall short of the CIA’s high standards of objectivity. And how far back in time can you understand English?
9. Winter just means more in Canada. Even when we lose gold in men’s hockey.
And our cold makes it easier to work in Antarctica. And our memes are prettier.
10. Few, if any, existed five years ago. Here are 26 ideas you should know before venturing full-bore into 2026…Plus, how does $100 grow, by asset class?
And how to slur your words on air – and keep your job.
11. What I’m liking. Instagram for unpacking why women mourn how the U.S. men’s hockey team behaved after their gold medal win over Canada last Sunday. Unpacking?…like this….and this…and this.