Maëlle Ricker’s smile was beamed around the world after winning the gold medal in the snowboard cross event at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Would the next Pierre Lueders please step up.

Daryl Rock always wanted to scuba dive. And today he does. Many a vacation he spends in the world’s warm-water diving meccas, among walls of anemones, fish-teeming reefs. So where’s the story? In the missing detail: Rock is a quadriplegic. A 1983 car accident put him in a wheelchair just months before he was planning to get his scuba certification.

Paralympians, listen up: whether or not you cruise to gold in Canada at the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games, you can always cruise Canada when the Games are done.  

Vancouver International Airport—YVR—is about to get the ultimate accessibility test. In just a few weeks, 1,600 athletes and officials will deplane in Richmond, BC for the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games.

When the 2010 Winter Games shutter up in March, there’s one souvenir everyone will come away with… post-2010 blues. Energy slump. Adrenaline deficit. What then?

“My fiction is really about sensual details—and luckily, we have them here.” Newfoundland and Labrador novelist Lisa Moore is right.

The province in the geographic centre of the country—easternmost in the prairie bed—can’t be pegged as “east” or “west,” in the same way that no genuine creative spirit can be stereotyped. Manitoba’s an artist.

If you’ve ever flown into Vancouver International Airport (YVR), you’ve already been to Richmond, BC, home ground and training haven to Paralympic curler Jim A