JEFFREY SIMPSON SPEAKS OF OLYMPIC TORCH MEMORIES - MINE AREN'T QUITE SO SENTIMENTAL

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

Yes, indeed, the memory will remain.

Ugh, I'm sorry, Jeffrey Simpson, but nothing about the Olympics is a bigger waste of time and money and publicity than the torch run.

Imagine the immense costs and logistical problems of lugging this goofy-looking object around every backwater of Canada?

It all started, as it always does, with the immense silliness of flying a flame in an airliner from Greece. Pure idiocy.

And it ended this time in the hands of a man who has lived for years in the United States.

But he's a celebrity, a celebrity raised in Canada.

My God, what a magical moment as he stood there in what looked like a fireman's coat with red mittens trying to roast a marshmallow at a camp fire.

The damned torch looks like nothing so much as a cheap prop in a science fiction movie. It truly is a homely object, something most people wouldn’t pick out of a neighbor’s recycle box.

And the picture going with this column touchingly shows an athlete holding a plastic mini-torch, resembling a Christmas ornament dollar-special at Wal-mart.

My, it is all stuck in memory, even if we have to pay the immense cost of this ridiculous Las Vegas show, and we don’t have the money.