Library hosts watch party for Olympics’ opening day

Team Canada had a few local cheerleaders who watched the opening ceremony for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at the Brandon Public Library on Friday.

People watched the livestream through CBC Gem on a large projector while snacking on cookies and coffee from Café Do Good.

A mother and her two sons were among a crowd of 15 people watching the games at around 1:30 p.m.

“We made a special trip to the library just for this,” said Kyla Yanick, who sat on the couch next to Olsen, 8, and Ari, 6. They were eager to spot any Team Canada hockey players.

“They’ve never watched it before. It’s their first time, so we wanted to see what it was all about,” she said.

Yanick said watching the games makes her feel very emotional and “really proud to be a Canadian.”

The Western Manitoba Regional Library’s downtown branch is one of 800 libraries across Canada to screen parts of the Olympics in partnership with CBC.

This is the first time the library hosted a watch party for the Olympics, and it may become a tradition every two years if there’s enough interest, said Alex Rogowsky, manager of programming and community services at the library.

“Usually, the opening ceremony is quite a spectacle, so we figured that would be a good part to show,” he said, adding that he thought it would be a good idea to stream hockey games in the future to “bring people out.”

The Olympic Winter Games are being held this year in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The competitions began on Wednesday and will finish on Feb. 22, with the Paralympics going from March 6 to 15.

The watch party was free for everyone to attend.

“We’ve got … people who will come every morning, read the paper, hang out for the whole time we’re open, and it’s like their living room, basically, so I wanted to create that kind of atmosphere,” Rogowsky said.

The library staff got coffee for about 100 people who could come and go as they wished, he said.

The Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation’s block connector program — which focuses on opportunities to build community connections — provided $300 to fund the library’s watch party, Rogowsky said.

He said global events like the Olympics are great for bringing people together.

“It can be easy, especially in … a place like Brandon, where we’re landlocked … You can kind of conceptually understand that the world is out there, but not everyone experiences that,” he said.

While Rogowsky said he’s more interested in watching the Olympic Summer Games, he has special memories of watching the Winter Games with his family.

“There was one year my grandma was staying with my family, and she was really into the figure skating, so I just watched a ton of that with her,” he said.

There are 206 Canadian athletes participating, with 107 athletes competing in women’s events and 99 athletes competing in men’s events, a Team Canada press release said.

Of those, 109 athletes are competing in the Olympic Winter Games for the first time, the release said.

Only five Manitobans are competing this year.

Jocelyne Larocque, 37, from Ste. Anne and Kati Tabin, 31, from Oakbank will be competing in women’s hockey.

Seth Jarvis, 24, and Mark Stone, 33, from Winnipeg and Travis Sanheim, 29, from Elkhorn will be competing in men’s hockey.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press