Coca-Cola Torchbearers – February 9th
NAME: Brittany Kachur
Hometown: Abbotsford, British Columbia
Carrying torch: Surrey
Torchbearer number: OTR103-059
Torch Relay Segment: February 9th, 2010
Age: 17
Torchbearer Story:
An Active Lifestyle is very important to Brittany Kachur and being involved in sports has provided a great foundation for this philosophy. For many years, Kachur has had the opportunity to play sports at a highly competitive level. It has allowed her to focus on sportsmanship, commitment, and teamwork, which has taught her about life and prepared her for adulthood. It has also provided Kachur a university scholarship.
Kachur is thrilled to give back to her community and offer other young athletes support and direction as they work towards achieving their athletic goals and promote an active lifestyle. Kachur is an assistant volleyball coach and enjoys sharing her knowledge of the game. Her hope is to become as skilled and successful as her coaches.
Kachur’s dream is to be an Olympic athlete. This dream was shattered with the decision to remove softball from the summer Olympics. Having the opportunity to participate in the 2010 Olympics as a Coca-Cola Torchbearer would allow Kachur to achieve some part of this dream. She would also be proud to represent the youth of Canada.
NAME: Brendan Sallis
Hometown: Burnaby, British Columbia
Carrying torch: Surrey
Torchbearer number: OTR103-057
Torch Relay Segment: February 9th, 2010
Age: 33
Torchbearer Story:
Brendan Salliss story represents a small-scale effort to reduce one family’s negative impact on the environment. It has been a slowly evolving process. It started out as small as recycling newspapers and cans and turning off the lights. Now, years later, as recycling becomes more main stream, Sallis’ family is recycling considerably more household waste than they are putting in the trash. His family has been consistently meeting their goal of lower hydro and gas usage than the corresponding months from previous years. As soon as Sallis’ family moved into their new townhouse, they switched all their lights to compact fluorescent bulbs. They do not use air conditioning in the summer and make minimal use of their electrical heat in the winter. Sallis’ family has also implemented a monthly ‘Earth Hour’, which their daughter has tried to pass on to her friends at school. Sallis is heartned to see how the next generation is adopting these habits despite some of the past difficulties to build environmental awareness.
NAME: Maria Bernardo
Hometown: Surrey, British Columbia
Carrying torch: Surrey
Torchbearer number: OTR103-009
Torch Relay Segment: February 9th, 2010
Age: 59
Torchbearer Story:
Maria Bernardo is a mother of two young adults in their twenties and learned early on in her children’s lives that she needed to lead by example. While her children were growing up, she always found the time to exercise, feeling much stronger and younger and reducing stress. By expressing her feelings of well being after exercising, she and her children could discuss the benefits of keeping active.
Bernardo hopes that she has inspired her children to stay active. As a breast cancer survivor, being fit at the time really helped her body withstand treatment and procedures. Bernardo continued to exercise right after her treatment and inspired many women to believe there is life after cancer.
NAME: Carole Gair
Hometown: Delta, British Columbia
Carrying torch: North Delta
Torchbearer number: OTR103-032
Torch Relay Segment: February 9th, 2010
Age: 71
Torchbearer Story:
Carole Gair has been swimming her entire life. Now at 71 years old, she continues to teach 18 to 90 year old competitive swimmers training three hours a week. Every swimmer logs their meters on the Masters Swim Canada website for which they are rewarded with swim caps, pins and certificates as they move towards a goal of 1, 000, 000 meters.
Gair has coached many swimmers over 50 years, three of whom won Olympic medals. Gair has encouraged swimmers from all walks of life to improve their swimming, fitness and even weight train outside of swimming to increase their strength.
Gair has a goal of building their team to over 100 participants by showing the great benefits of total body fitness through swimming.
The most rewarding thing for Gair is the joy of seeing her swimmers grow up and thank her for being part of their lives.
NAME: Clara Van Meel
Hometown: Maple Ridge, British Columbia
Carrying torch: New Westminster
Torchbearer number: OTR103-072
Torch Relay Segment: February 9th, 2010
Age: 18
Torchbearer Story:
Clara Van Meel is a flat water kayak racer. This year, she was honoured to represent BC in the Canada Games in PEI. She raced in the 1000m and 2000m K2 events and received a bronze medal in both events. Van Meel continues to train daily and hopes ot have a shot at the national team.
Van Meel knows what it takes to be a dedicated athlete. She knows the hard work, sweat and tears and the thrilling joy. Van Meel is happy to be part of the winter Olympics in her home province and is seeing her dream come true.
