By Emily Stonehouse

When I was growing up in the Haliburton Highlands, playing house league hockey on Thursday nights, I used to get changed in a closet.

It was tucked around the back of the concession stand, at the former Minden rink. I was sweating before I even got onto the ice, as I’d get changed on top of my hockey bag, sitting beside the furnace.

So when I watched the commentary of the men’s gold medal hockey game, the most viewed game in the country, presented by two women – two women who know the sport better than anyone, two women with multiple gold medals themselves, two women who also have lives and kids and a deeply rooted passion for Canada’s game – I felt emotional.

Because I sat there with my step-daughters, and suddenly, they realized it wasn’t just a boys club. It could be for them, for anyone, and the child inside my soul, the little one who got changed next to a furnace every week, she beamed.

Of course we watched the women’s game as well. We saw the best of the best, out there on the ice. And I was reminded that that’s what the Olympics is all about: representation. We send these athletes; the ones who are teachers and parents and retail workers and servers, we send them to the largest stage in the world.

Many are people we have never heard of before. While some of the NHL players ring familiar, the vast majority of Olympic headlines have been names I didn’t know. How fast they can become household favourites.

And that makes the representation even better. Because they’re not necessarily super stars. They’re Canadians, just like us, with a passion, talent, and dedication to a sport that makes them feel alive.

We can’t help but share the energy that came alongside a year of ‘Elbows Up’ competitions. It felt important this year. To the point where, at the beginning of the games, I found myself grumbling at every accolade the American team had wracked up.

They’re not deserving of anything, I thought to myself. They find themselves on a stage far too often these days, and for all the wrong reasons.

But as I watched the games roll out, I was reminded that a big part of that centre stage role isn’t the average American. It’s someone who takes up too much space, too much airtime, and too much brain power for those of us chasing our inner calm.

A bully with bells on, who weasled his way to the top.

But he doesn’t get any more airtime, here. Because through these Olympics, with athletes donned in red, white, and blue, I saw passion, I saw pride, I saw queer representation, I saw hope, I saw inclusion, I saw humanity.

When the American team captured gold on Sunday, my heart broke. Of course it did. I am a red-blooded Canadian. But when they brought out the kids and jersey of Johnny Gaudreau, an American player recently killed by a drunk driver, I didn’t see an us versus them situation.

I saw humans. I saw men showing compassion, showing emotions, showing love.

And that type of representation, that reminder that people showing up and putting their best faces forward; as commentators, as players, and representatives on the largest stage, it reminds us what really matters.

That somewhere out there, a little girl is getting changed in a closet.

But the future is bright, the possibilities, endless.