Spallumcheen’s Ina Forrest helped kick off the Beijing Paralympic Winter Games for Team Canada, bearing the Canadian flag at the opening ceremonies Thursday, March 4.
Forrest, a decorated wheelchair curler with two Paralympic gold medals to her name, was joined by ice sledge hockey player Greg Westlake, making it the first time the Canadian Paralympic team has opened the Games with two flag bearers.
Waving the FLAG 🇨🇦
— CBC Sports (@cbcsports) March 4, 2022
Curler Ina Forrest and hockey player Greg Westlake lead the way for Team Canada!
It's the first time in Canadian Paralympic history the country has been lead into the Games by two flag-bearers 👏 pic.twitter.com/1VTTTn6xrs
The opening ceremonies were marked by an impassioned opening statement by Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympic Committee, on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Tonight, I want to begin with a message of peace,” he began.
“As the leader of an organization with inclusion at its core, where diversity is celebrated and differences embraced, I am horrified at what is taking place in the world right now,” Parsons said, adding a call for “dialogue and diplomacy, not war and hate.”
Canada’s wheelchair curling team begins its quest for gold versus China Friday, March 4 at 10:30 p.m. PST.
Another North Okanagan athlete — Lumby’s Logan Leach — is competing in a para apline skiing event, the men’s downhill final (vision impaired division), at 6 p.m. tonight.
Forrest has never failed to make the podium in her three Paralympic appearances. She was part of Canada’s gold medal winning teams in 2010 and 2014, and won bronze in 2018 in PyeongChang.
Forrest has competed at 12 straight wheelchair curling world championships and has won three world titles and a silver in that span. She was inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame in 2016.
Forrest has a fan in Canadian artist Samantha Woj, who posted a video to Twitter on Friday showing her painting a portrait of Forrest using — you guessed it — a curling broom.
Painting Ina Forrest with a curling broom as a paintbrush. Congratulations on being a flag bearer for @teamcanada . Good luck at the Paralympics 😀 @CurlingCanada #curling @CDNParalympics @Paralympics pic.twitter.com/VgBtrZMsSv
— Samantha Woj (@SamanthaWojArt) March 4, 2022
READ MORE: Spallumcheen wheelchair curler bears flag and seeks fourth Paralympics medal
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