MONTREAL — Montrealer Alison Levine is going to be a torchbearer on March 4 for the upcoming Paralympic Games.
Alison Levine
Levine, 19, will be one of 600 Canadians around the country carrying the torch for the Paralympics, which begin March 12 in Vancouver at the same venues used for the Winter Olympics.
The Cote St. Luc resident and graduate of JPPS-Bialik will be accompanied by her close friend Tamar Eliashiv. They will head to Quebec City, one of 10 Canadian “celebration communities” where the Paralympic flame will be lit.
Levine, who uses a wheelchair because of a neurological condition, was astounded when Vancouver called her with the good news.
About 20 per cent of Paralympic torchbearers have disabilities.
Levine and other prospective torchbearers had to submit a 250-character entry as part of a contest sponsored by the Vancouver organizing committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).
The subject related to how being a torchbearer would “embody the Paralympic spirit,” Levine said.
“I was really shocked,” she said in phone interview. “Shocked and very excited.”
So were her parents, Roberta and Michael Levine, sister Amanda and other family and friends.
“Thanks for letting a proud Jewish mom share in her daughter’s excitement,” Roberta Levine said in an e-mail message to The CJN announcing the news.
Currently a special care counselling student at Vanier College, Levine said she would use a crutch under one arm and wield the Paralympic torch with the other. The Paralympic torch, which is manufactured by Bombardier, is exactly the same as the Olympic torch, except it’s blue instead of white.
Levine is also being furnished with a Hudson Bay Company-issued, blue Paralympic torchbearer uniform, “which I get to keep,” she said.
The uniform is emblazoned with the Paralympics symbol of three agitos (from the Latin word “agito,” meaning “I move”) and its torch relay emblem.
The Paralympic 2010 website says that “the Paralympic torch relay is one of the most important tools to increase awareness and communication for a Paralympic Games.”
One main difference between the Olympic and Paralympic torch relays – which began in 1988 – is that the Paralympic flame “has no traditional starting place” such as Olympia, Greece.
For that reason, each relay team in each participating city or town is free to kindle the flame in its own way at its own celebratory lighting ceremony.
In addition, for the first time in its history, the Paralympic relay will be run in a “non-linear” way. The first lighting ceremony will have an aboriginal theme and take place March 3 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa with the participation of torchbearers representing each province and the territories.
After Quebec City on March 4, the relay will move on to Toronto and then to several sites in British Columbia before finishing at Vancouver’s Robson Square on March 12, just prior to the opening ceremonies at BC Place.
The celebration events in each city will also be complemented by programs online and in schools as part of the emphasis on connecting Canadians to the Paralympic Games, the website said.
The Games will run March 12 to 21 and feature five sports: biathlon, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, wheelchair curling and ice sledge hockey, a sport Levine herself competes in along with wheelchair basketball (she competes on a AA team, les Tornadoes de CIVA).
At the last winter Paralympics in Turin, Italy, in 2006, Canada garnered 13 medals.
The winter Paralympic Games in 2014 will take place in Sochi, Russia.
