Olympic flame visits today
Published Tuesday November 24th, 2009
SUSSEX - Some people have all the luck.
Kandy Mitton of Little Salmon River is one of those people.
Like the other 12,000 torchbearers chosen in the country for the 109-day Olympic Torch Relay that will enliven the streets of Kings County to Saint John today, Mitton gets to wear the white suit and wildly-popular red mitts, and carry a piece of history with her.
With the exception of celebrities, Mitton and the other 154 torchbearers of today's leg of the relay poured their heart and soul into getting a 300-metre spot to carry the flame.
Mitton insists for her, there was no special talent to being selected. She simply had to be compulsive. Earlier this year when RBC and Coca-Cola announced the only public contests to select the country's torchbearers, she jumped on the computer nearly every day to enter, and enter again.
She submitted her name and email address to both relay sponsors RBC and Coca-Cola.
Through RBC she, like all applicants, had to make a pledge to prove her worth. For Mitton, an avid walker, she vowed to keep her community clean by picking up garbage along her walking route.
For Coke, she had to write an essay about how she has bettered her lifestyle by talking about her diagnoses of celiac disease and her commitment the past two years that saw her drop 100 pounds by running three miles a day and eating healthier.
"Once I heard about the relay and the thought got planted in my head last fall, I said 'this is something I have to do'. I didn't care if I had to sit on those computer sites every morning, I was committed."
Her relentlessness paid off.
"I was selected for both," the industrial pump salesperson said. She was given the offer to run between Moncton and Saint John by RBC, and between Summerside to Moncton for Coke.
"I just felt the closer to home the better to have family and friends there to support you," Mitton said, "but if my only option was to run in Edmundston, I would have been there."
Mitton will run at 5:03 p.m. in the Kennebecasis Valley on the Hampton Road between the post office and RBC Securities.
While the uniform that torchbearers wear is free, Mitton opted to buy her torch and a holder for it for just over $400, an option all runners have.
As soon as her portion of the run is over, she explained, the flame must be extinguished and its oil canister removed.
The Olympic flame itself is serious business. The flame today's torchbearers will be carrying through the region is the same one that has been in tact since it was handed to Canada in late October. It was lit in Olympia, Greece, on Oct. 22. At the time, five flames were presented in lanterns, one of which accompanies the torchbearer and the other four protected by an aboriginal flame keeper.
Once it makes its 45,000-kilometre trek across the country, reaching 90 per cent of the nation's population within a one-hour drive, it will be used to light the Olympic cauldron on Feb. 12 in Vancouver for the start of the 2010 Olympic games.
The relay will travel by convoy from Fundy National Park to the Sussex region, arriving on the Post Road in Sussex Corner at 12:58 p.m. today. It will then move along streets to the Sussex Elementary School where town-selected torchbearer Andrew Hunt will light the community cauldron around 1:30 p.m.
The flame will stay in Sussex as a celebration community for one hour. The convoy will then hit the road, and make it to Hampton for a drive-through starting at 3:12 p.m., and it will reach Quispamsis at 3:43 p.m. and Saint John for an evening celebration at the Marco Polo Cruise Terminal at 7 p.m.
Streets in Sussex, including Fundy, School and Duke, will be closed from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the RCMP will conduct rolling road closures throughout the route as needed to let the relay pass.
In route communities including Hampton and the Kennebecasis Valley, police will leap-frog ahead of the convoy to stop traffic where necessary. In Saint John, where the day's second community celebration is taking place, there will be delays along the relay route as it makes its way through the city. Beginning around 5:50 p.m., traffic will be stalled on Rothesay Avenue, and Union Street to Water Street. There will be no parking on Water Street from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. today.
On Wednesday, starting at 8:13 a.m., traffic will be delayed at Fort Howe, Lansdowne Avenue, Main Street, St. Patrick Street, Union Street, King Street, Charlotte Street, St. James Street, Prince William Street, Market Plaza, St. John Street, Dufferin Row, Martello Tower Park, Lancaster Avenue, and Duke Street West.
It will be a day to remember for those dozens of people trekking through the region today, Mitton insists.
"This is a chance of a lifetime - I think we all know that," said Mitton, the former president of the Sussex & District Chamber of Commerce. "I know I am very lucky. I will never be an athlete to the calibre needed to be in the Olympics, but what an exciting way to be part of it.
"I just hope I don't fall - what a time to trip!"
The relay will leave Saint John on Wednesday morning, to pass through Grand Bay-Westfield en route to Fredericton.
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