Jamaican Canadian wins medal at Olympics

By Gerald V. Paul

“I am so proud to be Canadian and so proud of my Jamaican heritage as well. Winning the medal for my country means so much but so does making history. It’s such an overwhelming feeling ….” Olympic athlete Shelley-Ann Brown enthused.

Silver medalist Brown quickly added, “It makes me feel so good. To do this in Black History Month. It means a lot to my family and to my friends and to my community.”

Brown won silver in the two-person woman’s bobsleigh event. She was the brakeman on the national team, which she joined in 2006.

“I am just so proud of Shelley–Ann and all the other Olympians. I certainly hope that we can get Shelley and the other Olympians to come back and to share their message of hope and courage and perseverance. Because assuredly, they went through a lot to get to where they are today,” TDSB Director of Education Chris Spence said after the win.

Brown, who hails from Pickering became one of the first Black Canadian women to win a medal at the Winter Games.

Brown and her teammate, pilot Helen Upperton, raced down the icy Olympic bobsled track to a second place finish…and then it was bedlam as students at Scarborough Village Public School went wild.

And they have ever right to be elated. For the school, with less than 200 students, Kindergarten to Grade 8, took up their homegrown hero’s cause through the “adopt-an-athlete” programme, which pairs schools across Canada with Olympic athletes to aid in fundraising efforts and encourage an active interest in Olympics.

The students sold reusable water bottles and caramel corn, raising more that $1,000 to offset some of Brown’s training costs.

In the summers, Brown works as a director at the Scarborough day camp, Camp E.D.F.Y. which stands for Education and Direction of Intelligent, Fit, Youth.

And as the School eagerly awaits Brown to return, she said: “I’m so proud to be Canadian. So proud to be Black, so proud to be female. I hope little girls in Canada see this, see what I accomplished and realize it doesn’t matter your background. You can do anything in sports if you work hard enough, no matter where you come from.”

Interestingly, Brown lived in the same town as Perdita Felicien, the St Lucia-born Canadian track and field athlete who won gold in the 100m hurdles in the 2003 World Championships in Paris and repeated the win for gold in the 60m hurdles at the 2004 World Indoor Championships in Budapest.