Do you remember where you were the day the Olympic Games came to town?
On this weekend in February 2010, the Winter Games kicked off in Richmond, Vancouver and Whistler.
Just a few days prior, our own Rick Hansen rolled into Minoru Park to be greeted by an electric crowd of 15,000 smiling and cheering Richmondites.
Hansen smiled and slapped hands as he wheeled his way around the track on his way to the O Zone Main Stage where he lit Richmond’s community cauldron.
To kick off Richmond’s Olympic-sized celebrations, a 30-metre long ice wall was opened at city hall.
The Ice Gate — one of the Richmond O Zone’s big attractions — “opened to the public with a blast of sound and sight from 80 Sunshine Coast dancers, that was matched only by the array of colours on show on the actual frozen wall itself,” as reported in the Richmond News at the time.
Ice Gate was a glass-enclosed wall of intricately painted ice stretching 30-metres wide and almost four-metres high and was one of the first attractions people would come across if entering the O Zone at city hall’s No. 3 Road entrance.
The Ice Gate was one of many spectacular Olympic attractions at Richmond during that unforgettable two weeks, not least the memorable scenes of the Canadian men and women long track speed skaters lunging for medals at the Oval.
