Deachman: Hope dashed — and restored — at Olympics watch party for Ottawa swimmer

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NORWAY BAY, Que.— On Wednesday night, Wilf Brousseau was in the living room of his Norway Bay cottage, busy glueing jumbo craft sticks (think tongue depressors, but larger) to the backs of cutout photos of his granddaughter Julie’s face.

Meanwhile, his daughter Christine Brousseau — Julie’s aunt — was going through the list of supplies, both bought and still needed, for Thursday’s Olympic watch party, as family, friends and nearby residents prepared to gather Thursday afternoon to cheer on Julie and her Canadian swim team teammates in the women’s 4x200m relay finals in Paris.

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Admittedly, the team had to do well in the morning’s heats to even qualify for the medal round, and there was no guarantee that Julie, just 18 and freshly graduated from Nepean High School, would even compete. But the evening was full of hope and possibility. How could it have been otherwise?

Two-hundred hotdogs. Check.

Seventy maple-leaf-shaped sugar cookies. Check.

Fixings for 50 pizzas. Check.

Ten hula hoops, wrapped in black, red, green, yellow and blue duct tape. Check.

Cupcakes decorated with Canada flags and Smarties Olympic rings. Check.

Hundreds of temporary tattoos, gold-rimmed plastic wine glasses, dollar-store gold medals, pop, juice, chips, beer, wine, ice, watermelon, Canada-themed hats, banners, balloons, streamers. Check, check, check.

On Thursday morning, the landscapers who attend to the lawn of Linda Dent’s cottage (that’d be great-aunt Linda to Julie), where the watch party was to take place, arrived early to get things in tip-top shape. Josh Beardsley, a family friend and techie from nearby Shawville, came to set up an outdoor screen and projector. Family and neighbours delivered barbecues, lawn chairs, tents and coolers. A Bristol board sign was taped to a chair down at the pier, inviting anyone and everyone to the party.

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Everything was coming together, and as the 4 p.m. race time approached, the community did, too: more than 200 people, some with signs. Almost as an afterthought, Brian Huck, who manned the hotdog barbecue, put out a donations jar to raise money for the Norway Bay Municipal Association, which promotes recreational and social activities. (By the time the race was over, more than $900 was in the kitty.)

“I think everyone in Norway Bay is here,” remarked Dorothy Cowley. “This is exciting. It’s the first world event in Norway Bay’s history.”

Despite the fact that Julie and her family live in Ottawa, Norway Bay, about an hour’s drive from Ottawa on the Quebec side of the river, near Shawville, was the natural spot for this watch party. It’s a tight-knit community where generations of families have raised their children. Everyone knows everyone, and their business. Like so many young cottagers, Julie learned to swim here, at both the pier and at the small beach at great-aunt Linda’s cottage, at around the same time she was learning to walk.

Alan Hill, whose cottage is kitty-corner to Dent’s, recalled the familiar scene, day after day, summer after summer, of Julie and her sisters, Merielle and Abby, climbing the fence at great-aunt Linda’s to cut through to the beach. “They looked like goslings heading to the water.”

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Most people here have at least one story to tell about Julie, and most involve swimming. Chris Kent, 57, told a familiar one involving the Norway Bay swimming regatta, held annually on the August long weekend.

One of the events is a long swim — about 1.2 km — in which the adults, presumed to be stronger swimmers, start about two minutes ahead of the youngsters, so the two groups don’t get mixed. At a regatta years ago, Kent was in the lead among the adults, when he saw “a torpedo with a wake” pass him. It was Julie, of course, then just nine or 10 years old. Despite the two-minute starting disadvantage, Julie, he recalled, finished the race eight minutes ahead of him.

Many versions of this story abound. Yet Carly Alexander, who swam with her at the Rookie Patrol level, recalled Thursday that Julie, despite being intensely competitive, never boasted.

“But if she comes back for the regatta,” Alexander joked, “she can’t take part.”

Meanwhile, as the eight hopeful teams emerged poolside in Paris to get ready for the final — Julie’s parents and siblings were there to watch in person — an encouraging chant of “Go, Julie, go!” erupted from this riverside community more than 5,000 km away.

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A brief drama erupted at the party when, only minutes before the race start, someone accidentally unplugged the projector and the screen went blank. Fortunately, the snafu was fixed before the swimmers mounted the starting blocks.

Then for the next eight minutes, the cottage spectators watched, many shouting encouragement, others simply clutching their drinks and hopes. A few huddled around cell phones for a closer, sharper view than the outdoor screen provided.

Judging the race solely by their faces, as I did, you could see how things played out. The initial enthusiasm was somewhat dampened as Canada got off to a slow start, only to pick up as Summer McIntosh, swimming third, narrowed the gap. Many faces brightened.

But by the time Julie, who anchored the team, dove into the water, the trio of teams that ultimately made it to the podium — Australia, the U.S. and China — was pretty much determined. Barring a miracle that never occurred, Julie’s goal at that point was to secure a fourth-place finish for Canada, which she resolutely did. The spectators watching now simply cheered the strong finish.

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Afterwards, a tearful Wilf thanked everyone who had come to the watch party. “Julie’s going to be all over this in four years,” he promised, the dashed medal hopes replaced by new ones.

“I’m so proud of her,” he told me. “She was busting her ass. She wasn’t going to quit.

“She never quits.”

Hours later, as the sun began to set on the day, only a few stragglers remained at the Norway Bay cottage. It struck me that there must be hundreds of similar watch parties occurring in homes, schools, bars and, yes, cottage enclaves across the country, as friends, families, coworkers and others gather to celebrate and cheer on the more than 300 Canadian athletes competing in these Olympics.

If Norway Bay’s watch party was any measure, they share in common the spirit that the Olympics were always intended to embody. While the games themselves may occasionally be tainted by doping and droning and backroom politics, the watch parties never lose sight of friendship and solidarity.

And hope is never extinguished. I suspect there’ll be another watch party at Norway Bay in 2028.

bdeachman@postmedia.com

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