Two year countdown to the 2010 games in Vancouver begins today

The Olympic flame will arrive at BC Place Stadium exactly two years from today to open the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, an event that Premier Gordon Campbell vowed Monday "will touch each and every Canadian."

"Up to three billion sets of eyes will be focused on that torch as it crosses your country and your province and enters that stadium." Campbell appeared with Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee chairman Jack Poole to mark the two-year countdown at a sold-out $95-plate lunch hosted by the Vancouver Board of Trade.

"This Olympic Games doesn't just belong to Vancouver and Whistler or even British Columbia," said Campbell, who arrived escorted by two Mounties in red serge. "Every person in Canada wants to be a part of these Games." But nowhere have Canadians embraced the Games more than in B.C., he said in a spirited speech to about 1,200 people at the Hyatt.

[A] group representing aboriginal Canadians staged an anti-Olympic protest outside. About 50 protesters pressed against police lines to voice their complaints that the Olympics are damaging native land and leaving many homeless people without housing.

Angela Sterritt of the group Native 2010 Resistance told the crowd Olympic construction has destroyed native trap lines, hunting grounds, salmon stocks and sacred First Nations sites. Campbell says there will always be skeptics, but he believes there's overwhelming support for the games, adding that four First Nations bands are supporting the games. Sterritt says the four First Nations who are Olympic partners don't speak for the native poor and homeless hurt by the games.

Sterritt says while Olympic organizers work with a $2 billion budget, Vancouver has North America's fastest-growing homeless crisis.

Campbell pointed to communities around British Columbia that are helping young athletes with financial support and creating legacy projects that will help potential Olympians train for the 2010 Games and provide facilities for decades to come.

"The Olympics is about looking for the best, first in ourselves and then giving the best of ourselves to others," Campbell said.

"Prince George has built a new nordic sports centre, so that northern athletes can be the best that they can possibly be," said Campbell. Kimberley created a new training centre for paralympic athletes, "so that our paralympic athletes are the best that they can be."

"So much to do," said [Jack] Poole. "One point five billion dollars worth of work is still to be done in 732 days."

After four and a half years of planning and construction, the Vancouver Games are about to enter a phase that will touch a great many more people much more directly.

Campbell said the torch relay will give people across the country a chance to be part of the Games "in a unifying band of light that will stretch from coast to coast to coast."

Vanoc will issue a call for torchbearers later this year, and reveal the route the torch will take across the country.