Peggy Revell
It will be a proud moment for district resident Ken Young on Feb. 10 in North Vancouver when he takes hold of the Olympic torch to represent Canada’s veterans.
Two days before the 2010 Olympics kick off, the veteran will be carrying the torch for 300 metres—although he admitted he doesn’t know exactly why he was selected.
“I got a phone call from Veterans’ Affairs Canada and I was asked if I would be willing to represent veterans, and I said, ‘Of course,’” Young recalled.
“I didn’t think ‘Why me?’ It was too much of an honour.
“I couldn’t believe it, really,” he added about his reaction to the news. “Until I got word back from the Olympic committee, I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a joke.”
His family was just as surprised about the news, he added.
Young served with the Royal Canadian Regiment for 13 years, from 1965 to the end of 1977. He worked overseas in Germany with NATO and also served as a peacekeeper for the United Nations in Cyprus.
Shortly after leaving the army, he and his family settled down in Finland here in Rainy River District.
“I looked around for places I liked. I like fishing, I like hunting,” Young noted.
“We visited all over the place, and the place with the most reasonable price in housing and stuff happened to be right here,” he said about how he came to live in Sunset Country along with his wife, Chris, and raise their two sons.
Currently they operate Young Star House, a group home near Emo.
While he and his wife still live in the district, Young is back and forth to Nanaimo, B.C. where he’s working on renovating a home which they plan to retire to eventually.
Meanwhile, with his big day less than two months away, Young said he’s been busy preparing.
“[My] wife phoned me up and asked me what I was doing. I said, “I’m training for the Olympics!’” he noted, adding he’s been running and lifting weights to make sure he can hold the three-and-a-half pound torch up for the whole 300-metre run.
As for the day itself, he said he has “no idea” what it will be like at this point.
“To be honest, it hasn’t taken place yet so I’m still leery. After it’s over, I’ll know I did it,” Young said, noting the exact time and location of where he will be running in North Vancouver hasn’t been released.
“Being that close to the Olympics, I imagine that just about every country’s cameras are going to be there. Probably a very hectic day,” he added.
“I kind of wish the people who were protesting would keep their protesting to an appropriate time,” Young said of the protesters seen along the Olympic torch route so far and who also will be in Vancouver.
He stressed he’s proud to be an Olympic torchbearer.
“I’m very proud, and the reason for that is it’s one of the few things in the world that is supposed to be apolitical,” Young reasoned. “I say supposed to because Atlanta and Moscow showed that it wasn’t.
“But it should be.”
And being an Olympic torchbearer is definitely a story Young plans to pass along to his children and grandchildren, and imagines he’ll be bringing his torch in to show the kids at Young Star House, as well.
“I’m already building a wall for the torch to go on” he laughed.
“I bought it,” he explained. “You have to pay for it, but there’s only [around] 12,000 runners in Canada, there’s only going to be 12,000 [torches].
“Someone’s already got one on the Internet—I think they wanted $3,000,” Young added, though stressing he’ll be holding on to his own torch.
“It’s a keepsake—no way it’s going anywhere,” he vowed.
