For
Calgary’s 1988 Olympic Torch Relay, Dr. Suzette Cooke (née Smith) ran part of the leg from Sparwood, British Columbia, across the provincial divide to Alberta. She had recently competed in the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Summer Games as a volleyball player, but that experience couldn’t compete with the emotion of connecting with an entire Canadian community, including hundreds of children. Local schools were let out. Parents with strollers looked on. Cooke was followed by a police motorcade while a flurry of Canadian flags guided her path. All those people had braved brutally cold temperatures to catch a glimpse of the flame.
“You get the sense of the kids being very much a part of this — kids starting to become aware of the Olympics, what it means, and this dream that people have for reaching a certain level in sport,” said Cooke. “So to me, that was the most important part of it. To think about what they were dreaming about and the hope that they would have for their own dreams.”
