Home Sweet Home

You can go home again. Just ask Kate Charbonneau, who might still be pinching herself a few days from now, just to make sure it's all real.
"I still can’t believe it. I really can’t," the 15-year-old Winnipeg native said after claiming the junior women's title earlier today at the 2009 BMO Canadian figure skating championships. "I have no idea what I’m going to do now."
That Charbonneau rose from fifth after the short program to the top of the podium might be a quite the story in itself. But this is a tale that runs much, much deeper than that.
When she was four years old, Charbonneau's family moved from Manitoba across the border to Savage, Minn. (just south of Minneapolis) because her father, Dan, changed jobs. Since then, she's trained in nearby Bloomington with her mother, Lorie, on the other side of the boards as her coach (she also works part-time with Robert Tebby at the Mariposa School of Skating in Barrie, Ont).
Three years ago, Charbonneau finished fourth in the intermediate category (the equivalent of pre-novice in Canada) at the U.S. Junior Nationals. Things were going well. But all along the way, she harboured a dream that just wouldn't go away. To return to the land of her birth and skate in Manitoba colours at the Canadian championships.
"This is really what I always wanted to do. Always," she said.
Finally, Charbonneau made the plunge this season. The emotion of the moment overwhelmed her Wednesday just before she glided onto the ice at Saskatoon's Credit Union Centre to skate her short program.
"Before I skated, I came back here and I cried," she said. "I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe it and I still can’t believe it. I went out there and I did what I could do. It was all I had to do, I guess."
While most of the field above her after the short program faltered, Charbonneau did just enough to hold off Cambria Little of Kelowna, B.C., for the gold. Charbonneau totalled 120.41 points; Little wound up with 119.18. The bronze went to Rylie McCulloch-Casarsa of Burlington, Ont. (114.82).
On this day, the gold almost seemed secondary for a young girl from Manitoba who never stopped believing in her dream.
"I’ve always wanted to skate for Canada since I was about four years old," said Charbonneau, who had 10 relatives in the stands to cheer her on. "My dream is finally coming true."
There is something about the junior women's event at this competition, it seems. Two years ago, Ottawa's Dana Zhalko-Tytarenko skated the performance of her young life to win the gold, an astonishing feat considering she'd been 15th as a novice at junior nationals in 2006.
Last year, it was Kelsey McNeil of tiny Salisbury, N.B., breaking through as a first-year junior after placing seventh in novice the year before.
All surprising winners, all of them 15 years old.
Who says dreams can't come true?