Olympic Flame

The Olympic Flame is a symbol of the Olympic Games. Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, its origins lie in ancient Greece, where a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since. (wiki)

For the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, the flame was lit in Olympia on October 22, 2009.  It then traveled from Greece, over the North Pole to Canada's High Arctic and on to the West Coast and Vancouver. The relay started its long Canada journey from the British Columbia capital of Victoria. In Canada, the torch traveled approximately 45,000 kilometers over 106 days, making it the longest relay route within one country in Olympic history. The Olympic Torch was carried by approximately 12,000 Canadians and reached over 1,000 communities. 

It now sits in the downtown Vancouver harbour front area, with a massive fenced gate around it. There was much complaining about this, so VANOC moved the gate closer to the flame . They've added some plexi glass so people can get decent photos of the flame without an ugly fence in the way. Our experience lasted about 5 minutes as there really isn't much to see. You take a photo, you say an OHHH and an AHHHH, and that's that. But, how many people can say they've seen the official Olympic Torch? Not many.   Good times!