To quote one of my very favourites, K'naan, "until the lion learns to speak the tales of hunting will be weak".

Well, the lion may not be speaking yet, but with the video below, it sure is discovering cadence. Thunder Bay is a gem in the rough of northern Ontario. It has, for far too long, been a sleeping giant at the foot of the Sleeping Giant. Still, those who call it home are fiercely proud and loyal. It might well "learn to speak some day", and take its place as more than a middling city in the near north of the True North.

So it is that with the flourish of a ceremony distinctly Canadian, our podium season has come to an end. We stood proud, we stood tall, and perhaps most important of all, we surprised ourselves and the world. High was our resolve, and high was the result of the same. To create a policy categorically dedicated to excellence was audacious. The questions were obvious. What if we fall short? What if we only get to own the podium in the sense that we provide the softwood that goes into building it? Those questions certainly came early, and came hard. Still, the truth is that to refrain from dreaming is to stagnate. Own The Podium was about well placed audacity, and at the close of it all, stagnation was far from Vancouver, records had instead been broken.

What then, is the lesson we must take from our athletes? I would hazard that there are many. From triumph over adversity to the psychology that simply says "giver 'er"; from never shying away from a face-off to having the temerity to battle back from the brink; from knowing that your best if often far above the point pegged in your mind to taking on mountains, our athletes have thought us to set high bars and then take them on.

The scope of what we are yet to achieve as a nation is breath-taking, and we can achieve all of it through a culture that mixes excellence with humility, aplomb with compassion. Ours is the true north, strong and free, and there is strength and freedom enough for much good within and beyond our shores.