I watched our athletes march into the stadium in Pyeongchang, South Korea, this morning.
As always it was a proud moment, and I'm looking forward to cheering for all of them.
But I have to admit I will be cheering for one of them even more than all the others.
Because he is my kind of Canadian hero.
And the fact that he's at the Olympics is the closest thing to a miracle.
Like everybody else I knew Gord Downie was dying, from an aggressive form of brain cancer that grows fast and spreads quickly.
But I was amazed at how long he lasted before death finally claimed him.
I was impressed by all the things he managed to do in the time he had left.
And nothing moved me more than this.
It's been seven months since the wildfire they called "The Beast" came roaring out of the woods and threatened to consume Fort McMurray.
It was Canada's biggest story of the year, and the costliest disaster in Canadian history.
And who can forget what a hellish beast it was?
These ORNGE air ambulances are a familiar sight in my neighbourhood, taking off or coming into land at the Toronto Island Airport.
And I like having them around, because my heroes are those who risk their lives to try to save the lives of others.
But three years ago one of them crashed in northern Ontario.
And it couldn't be a more tragic or more Canadian story.
When I saw the pictures of what the fire they called The Beast had done to Fort McMurray, at first I was shocked by the devastation.
Stunned at the sight of so many houses and hopes and memories reduced to ashes by its raging fury.
But then I was amazed to see how much of Fort Mac had been saved, almost ninety percent.
I don't usually run public service announcements on this blog.
But because my heroes are healers not killers I'm going to make an exception.
And ask you to please help spread this message:
If you see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles ahead please slow down.
For five long years Kevin Page was the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and in many ways the conscience of the Con regime.
They hated the way he stood up for the truth, they hounded him, they made his life miserable.
And two years ago they finally forced him out.
But now Page is back with a new book, that tells the story of those nightmare years.
Historians will no doubt have a hard time trying to explain how so many Canadians were fooled for so long by Stephen Harper, in the horrifying years known as The Great Darkness.
When evil reigned, scientists were muzzled, history was reduced to propaganda and the cult of his personality. And hope withered on the vine.
But at least they'll agree on one thing: He was no Canadian hero or a Great Leader.
Except in his own troubled mind.
Just a morally depraved tinpot dictator, who must have really hated this list of REAL Canadian heroes.
It's not easy looking for heroes in Harperland.
Everywhere I look all I see is corruption and scandal.
Grubby politicians and small greedy people.
But of course there are real heroes out there.
And these were four of the best
One of the worst things about living in Stephen Harper's monstrous Canada, is having to spend so much time writing about the crimes of the Con regime.
The vile acts, the ugliness, the cruelty, the barbarism of that bestial cult that is slowly killing our country.
Instead of being able to write about the more beautiful things, the good people, and the great Canadian stories that inspire me, and make our country worth saving.
When you stare at the public face of Stephen Harper's sinister Con regime, what you see is horrifying enough.
A tired, morally corrupt regime, that is willing to lie, muzzle people, or do anything to cling to power.
But what most Canadians don't see, what is hidden from their view, is even more frightening.
It could have been a truly great occasion.
A group of Canadian kids getting a chance to talk to a real Canadian hero, Chris Hadfield.
But of course he HAD to be there.
Hundreds of school children have chatted live with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield as he orbits the earth, and now Prime Minister Stephen Harper has had his chance, too.
To get his picture taken with Hadfield and the children, to try to make it look like he's a Great Space Leader, and that at least in space we're STILL number one !!!! Even if we aren't on Earth.
It was a wonderful Canadian moment.
One of my Canadian heroes, Romeo Dallaire, talking about another of my heroes, the late great Stompin' Tom Connors.
Telling Evan Solomon about the day when him, his U.N. soldiers, and about 200 civilians were in a Rwandan hotel under heavy enemy fire.
How he played Stompin' Tom's song The Blue Berets, and how it cheered them all up, had them clapping their hands and stomping their feet, even as the mortars and shells rained down on the hotel.
His name was Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener.
He was a Canadian peacekeeper who was killed murdered by the Israeli military in 2006.
Now the Canadian military, and the Harper government, are trying to cover-up how he died.
The Defence Department has quietly removed from the Internet a report into the killing of a Canadian military officer by Israeli forces, a move the soldier’s widow says is linked to the Conservative government’s reluctance to criticize Israel for any wrongdoing.
I was sorry I couldn't make it to this tribute to Jack Layton.
And that I didn't get a chance to scrawl a message on that huge wall at City Hall as I did a year ago.
But I was happy to see that somebody wrote what I probably would have written:
I wasn't planning to write about this storm in the twittersphere.
Because what can you say eh? Except that it's obviously summer. Tony Clement is a shameless idiot. Ezra Levant is a freak of nature. And Norman Bethune is bigger than all of them.
But now that the grotesque Con Rob Anders has crawled out of his hole to dump on Bethune's legacy
I feel I need to say something.
Twenty-three years ago 14-year-old Joey Philion was a hero, for racing into his burning home looking for his mother. And sustaining burns to ninety percent of his body.
That's a General pinning a medal on him in hospital.
Today he lies in an old folks home in in B.C. waiting to die.
It has been a long, torturous journey for the boy with a big smile who is now an immobile, bloated 37-year-old man whose scarred fingers are twisted into angry fists and has stumps where his feet were burned away so long ago. His skin falls off in chunks, he has hepatitis C and has lost all his teeth.
All but forgotten and terribly lonely.
“Joe’s hanging on, I don’t know how...But it’s so lonely for him. Other than me, hardly anyone ever comes to visit now.
He said the other day that he doesn’t want to wake up any more. When he goes to sleep at night, he hopes he won’t wake up."
It's such a sad story. And to make matters even worse it reminds me of the way some of our wounded soldiers are treated.
Hailed as heroes, but hidden from view, then slowly forgotten. Or worse.
The administrative review is expected to start in the spring but sources say as many as 18 of the soldiers, some severely wounded, could be asked to leave.
Oh boy. If I lived in B.C. I would try to visit Joey Philion.
Just to say hi, and tell him what I would tell those soldiers.
Some people have short memories. Some people are bastards.
But the good are not forgotten.
And heroes are FOREVER...
