How Times Have Changed

They've just turned up the lights in the media centre at the Credit Union Centre. And maybe that can serve as a rather appropriate segue toward the topic of our latest post.
Namely, the bright mood that today surrounds these 2009 BMO Canadian Figure Skating Championships and the sport in general across our fair land. Let's just say it's like night and day, so to speak, since we all convened here the last time.
Allow me, for a moment, to refresh your memory about the 2003 nationals at Saskatchewan Place (as this building was named back then). The figure skating world was still reeling from the judging scandal involving Canadian heroes Jamie Sale and David Pelletier at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, a sordid affair that literally brought the sport to its knees.
That dark cloud was still very much hanging in the air as Canada's best gathered on the Prairies a year later and did their best to put the focus and all that is right and good about figure skating. It was never more of a chore in that regard, to be sure.
Yet, here we are five years later in that same building — it's now called the Credit Union Centre — and the focus hasn't changed all that much. Only this time, there is nothing forced about it. You look to the left during the opening press conference for the 2009 Canadians and you see a pair of world bronze medallists (Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison) and a young woman who's determined to join them herself in a few months time (Joannie Rochette). It's much the same scene on the other side — reigning world ice dance silver medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir sitting beside Patrick Chan, one of the top young stars in men's skating.
Skate Canada CEO William Thompson talks with pride about a championships in which "the categories are very, very wide open. This is the way we like it. We want to see competition."
The explanation behind that sentiment is perhaps the thing that counts the most of all at this point in time.
"What's critical for our sport is that the results are fair and that they reflect what happens on the ice," said Thompson. "That is what we want our officials to do and that is what we want every athlete to know when they come to this event, that they have a shot at getting on (Canada's) world team."
Five years later, isn't that the most wonderful of thoughts? And proof that, indeed, the cloud that darkened this event in 2003 is long, long in our past.
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Some things just take some getting used to when you move into a different time zone. Like, for example, looking out the window from our home base at the Delta Bessborough and still seeing darkness (and street lights in full glare) at 8:30 a.m.
It's enough to make a person crawl back under the covers. Especially when he knows the chill is very much still in the air outside.