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Adam Huras
Telegraph-Journal

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OROMOCTO - Cpl. Adam Foster says it's what you call a national peacekeeping mission.

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Adam Huras/Telegraph-Journal

LeRoy Washburn of Oromocto heads into Canadian Forces Base Gagetown on Wednesday to light the Ormocto area’s celebration cauldron during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay.

A total of 21 service men and women and a tank-like mine clearing vehicle from Canadian Forces Base Gagetown helped the Olympic torch make its way through central New Brunswick on Wednesday.

A five-gun salute and more than 2,000 cheering school children were part of a celebration in Oromocto as the flame moved one day closer to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

Foster sat in behind the wheel of a "Buffalo-" a cage armored vehicle - as New Brunswick curler and torchbearer Andrea Kelly of Fredericton popped her head out of a hatch with the torch held high so the Olympic flame could take a ride.

It was third straight day of runners carrying the flame through New Brunswick's.

"I was told it would be my mission about a week ago," Foster said, a six-year veteran of the Canadian Forces who believes he is tentatively set to be deployed to Afghanistan in 2011. "I said, 'That's pretty cool.'"‚"

Buffaloes are usually used in combat and are the most mine-resistant vehicle in the world, according the Canadian Forces personnel.

Typically, it has an iron claw on robotic arm that reach of up to nearly 10 metres to safely dispose of mines and improvised explosive devices.

It also serves as a communications vehicle in high risk terrain - and now an Olympic flame mobile unit.

Kelly was proud to be given the honour to ride in the unit on Wednesday.

"I had the goal of going to the Olympics and our team has been playing in the Olympic trials for the last three years to make it," said Kelly, who also works on the Gagetown base in family support services. "But that didn't happen, so I'm excited to still be a part of Vancouver 2010 and then this gives me a taste of that and more motivation."

Kelly skipped for Team New Brunswick in both the 2002 and 2004 Canadian Junior Curling Championships before winning the tournament in 2005.

At the World Junior Curling Championships that year, she skipped Team Canada to a bronze medal. She won the provincial Scotties Tournament of Hearts title in 2009, but the team fell short in winning national qualifiers.

She was not the only athlete to carry the flame in New Brunswick on the day, as LeRoy Washburn lit the celebration cauldron at Gagetown's J7 Parade Square.

"We're only a small community, but we're powerful," Washburn said, after running through a crowd of more than 2,000 school children and community members. "This community is a celebration of what this country is."

Washburn, now 75, was a track and field athlete who almost qualified for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. He later went as an official to the Games in both Montreal and Atlanta.

From Oromocto, he was also a long-standing athletics director at St. Thomas University and is a member of the local school board.

"Every child in the area is either here watching, or lined the torch route here," he said with a smile.

The flame began the day in Saint John and ended it in Fredericton with seven stops in between as former Olympic medalist freestyle and medley swimmer Marianne Limpert lit the flame's cauldron in the capital on Wednesday night.

Limpert went to school in Oromocto and lived in Fredericton early on in her athletic career.

The flame also made its way through its first two New Brunswick First Nations communities, stopping at the Oromocto and St. Mary's First Nations.

"You would never think that the flame would stop in a little place like ours," said Cody Saulis of Oromocto First Nation, a wrestler who represented New Brunswick at the Canada games. "It means a lot to the people, it makes them a part of something that's big."

Saulis held the torch high while native drums played in the background as elder fire keeper Charles Sark blessed the flame to provide it a safe journey to Vancouver.

Chief Roger Atwin declared the event an "historical moment for the community."

The torch run takes a day off today and resumes its 106-day nationwide tour on Friday.

The flame will then be taken across the northern half of New Brunswick until the end of next week. Highlights of the northern leg include the crossing of the Centennial Bridge in Miramichi, a pause to honour the Boys in Red memorial in Bathurst and a visit Grand Falls.