Celebrating A One Year Anniversary

I don't know what the traditional present is for a first anniversary but this year it was Gold. On February 28, 2011 a bunch of us from Twitter gathered at Real Sports Bar and Grill in Downtown Toronto to mark the one year anniversary of the now historic Canada vs USA Hockey Gold Medal game and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony.
We had been talking for some time on Twitter about what to do for the anniversary. @Todd_W finally took the initiative and booked a reservation for us. Most of the people who attended had met on Twitter, some of us were in Vancouver for the Olympics, some were not and just came out to join the celebration.
Its funny to think, out of all the people there, most of them I hadn't even known at this time last year. Now on this day we came together to celebrate an event that we all had shared in different ways.

One half of our group at Real Sports.

The bar was showing the Men's Gold Medal game on their gigantic screen when we got there. I had planned on watching it but then got to talking about my Olympic adventures with all who were there. Shortly after arriving, an anchor man with CP24 came over to our group, decked out all in our Canada gear, and asked us to come join him for a live segment they were shooting from Real Sports. Finally my chance to be on TV! We all said where we were for the game. I was at BC Place watching the game on the screens while we waited for the Closing Ceremony to begin. Most of the group had watched the game with family or friends, some at home, some at a restaurant or bar. I have to say it was pretty fun to be on TV talking about the Olympics again. After the interview I called my parents to get them to watch it and tape it. I have yet to see the footage but I am sure our group came across as die hard Canadian loving fans!

One of the few people from my Olympic days I had not yet met was @MolsonTonia. Her and another Molson person were in contact with me quite a bit last year. Tonia even had Molson lanyards shipped to me to include in my loot bag. Tonia happened to be at Real Sports as well that night and we finally got a chance to talk. She also brought some hockey jerseys for prizes.

The jersey was a prize for Olympic trivia.

A special celebration was also going on at Real Sports in addition to ours. Molson and CTV were also hosting a anniversary party. Some members of the Women's Hockey team were present. For fundraising, bags with various Olympic paraphernalia had been assembled and available if you made a donation, which of course most of us did. A hat, scarf, tee, pin set and DVD set of the hockey games made it the best donation I've ever given! Now I can watch both Hockey Gold medal games in full whenever I want!
Some of the Olympic attendees brought their photo albums and I had fun looking at their photos and listening to their stories. I still don't know too many people who were at the Olympics so it was nice to hear someone else's stories for a change.
It was such a fun night, hanging out with Olympic people always is. Lots of talking, lots of laughs and lots of memories. That is what the Olympics is to me now with tons of new friends to share it with.

Other members of the group. Fun time for all.

 

Here is the video from our interview on CP24.

If you are on twitter, our hash tag for this event is #Van2010reunion. Special thanks to @The_JMoney for letting me use some of his photos. If footage of the interviews gets posted, I'll be sure to include the links here.