We've got spirit, yes we do
 Doug Smith, chairman of the North Shore Spirit of B.C. committee, knows that there are people out there who aren't happy that the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games are coming here.
Those people, however, are none of his concern.
"People wake up in the morning and they're either cup half full, the world is a wonderful place and how do I engage it people; or they're people who it just doesn't matter what the subject is . . . they're just grumpy about it," Smith says on a recent afternoon at the West Van Partners Centre, the cosy Marine Drive home of North Shore Spirit of B.C. "I'd rather surround myself with people who say, 'Yeah, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Let's go for it.'"
Executive director Linsey Keats (left) and chairman Doug Smith are the driving force behind the North Shore Spirit of B.C. committee, a group charged with harvesting the benefits of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. NEWS photo Mike Wakefield
He's in the right place now. Smith, vice president of the North Shore Credit Union and a "serial volunteer," was picked by the North Shore's three mayors to head up the committee that will be the face of the North Shore during the Games.
And while North Shore Spirit is tasked with rounding up 500-700 volunteers in the lead-up to the Games, they have only one paid employee: executive director Linsey Keats.
"We pay her for six hours a day and we work her for 16," says Smith with a laugh.
Keats, a former West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce employee, earned her spurs working for Expo 86 and says the 2010 Games will far surpass that great experience.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, you don't want to miss this," she says. "If we're the best we can be to ourselves and to each other as hosts and as visitors I think we're going to make incredible connections and it's going to be a positive experience for each person that is involved."
For Smith, the debate about whether or not the Games are a good thing is moot.
"You can always build an argument whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. But you know what? It's coming. That debate is over," he says. "The world is going to fall in love with the North Shore when they see the pictures panned across the North Shore Mountains. . . . I think that there are huge benefits that are coming out of it."
Source: North Shore News - September 27, 2009
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