When I sat with Linda Thom in the Old Ottawa South park that honours her last May , the mood was hardly celebratory.
The replica medal commemorating Thom’s Olympic gold in women’s pistol shooting at the 1984 Los Angeles games had seen far better days — it looked in places as if it had been used for target practice itself and had deteriorated so badly that Thom admitted to being embarrassed whenever she brought friends to the park.
I wrote about it then, calling it a shabby way to honour one of Canada’s — and Ottawa’s — Olympic champions.
On Wednesday this week, Thom and I met up in the park again, this time under far happier circumstances.
Earlier in the day, Capital Coun. Shawn Menard , in whose ward the park is located, sent me a photograph of the replacement medal that the city had quietly installed. Expecting that Thom had already seen it, I called her to ask what she thought.
It turns out she didn’t know about it. So we agreed to meet at the park again.
By the time I arrived, Thom, who lives just steps away, had already had a few minutes to take it all in — enough time to take a photo and send it to her son and daughter in B.C.
But she was still grinning when I got there.
“It looks great,” she said excitedly. “They’ve simplified it a bit, but it looks really good and very authentic.”
The difference was obvious. The new metal version looks cleaner and more durable than its predecessor, which appeared to be made of some fibrous or pressboard material.
“They’ve done a wonderful job,” Thom said.
It wasn’t simply the workmanship that pleased her, though. It was knowing that the city had decided the tribute was worth restoring in the first place. There had been earlier attempts to persuade the city to do something, she added, with neighbours writing or calling.
“But this time they did it. I hope people continue to respect it.”
I later asked Menard if his office had a hand in getting the medal replaced. He said they sent staff a link to my May column and pushed them to act. “I think they were rowing in this direction anyway, though.”
It was a team effort, really, involving neighbours, a newspaper, an elected official and city staff.
When I wrote about the park in May, Carleton University sociologist Tonya Davidson told me that monuments help shape how people experience a city. That was abundantly evident on Wednesday, as passersby — some who recognized Thom and others who didn’t — commented on the improved commemoration.
My favourite was a man talking on his cellphone. Glancing toward the monument, he stopped.
“Oh, look,” he said into his phone. “They fixed that Linda Thom statue. It looks great.”
I interrupted just long enough to tell him that the woman standing beside him was, in fact, Linda Thom.
Surprised, he briefly tried to carry on two conversations at once before giving up.
“Can I call you back in a couple of minutes?” he asked into his phone. “Linda Thom is actually here.”
Freed from his call, he and Thom then shared a brief conversation.
It struck me as exactly the sort of thing Davidson had described. The tribute wasn’t just a reminder of something that happened more than four decades ago. It had, once again, become a meeting place between Ottawa’s past and its present.
Which, it seems to me, is exactly what it was meant to do.
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