Congratulations to Nicolas Gill for being selected as the Canadian Team's Flag Bearer at the Athens Olympic Games. This is great for the sport of Judo which benefits from much needed exposure. Gill, who already has two Olympic silver medals, along with numerous other international wins, will no doubt pull off a few of his mind-boggling techniques to win another medal, maybe gold.
Nicolas Gill is from Montreal, a bilingual Francophone, and very popular in Quebec. Almost immediately after the announcement, Sun Media went into attack mode, criticizing the choice of Gill because he was a Quebecer and had once, years ago, said he voted Yes in one of the referendums on independence.
The Sun Media articles were just plain mean. They had nothing to do with Sports, Judo, the Olympics, or anything important. They were trying to create a wedge issue based on politics and identity. Sun Media thinks you are stupid by expecting you to believe Nicolas Gill is not a good enough Canadian to carry the flag. Why did a simple sports story get handed to a bigot to write?
You can bet that the Sun Media reporters will be all over the Olympic Village and the various ceremonies looking for Quebec flags, ready to expose those who have them as un-Canadian or ungrateful or whatever.
Further reading:
CBC's original story
Cyberpresse in Quebec
Sun Media hate literature
Globe & Mail
Brief history of Judo
Rosie Dimanno of the Toronto Star gets it
Update: Not surprising the Sun Media link is broken. It seems they deleted or moved this story on their web site. We will have one of our interns try to track down the correct link.
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