Canada: Red, White… and Green?

So, here you’re looking at the newly unveiled Canadian Olympic uniforms.

If one can call them that.

Keeping in mind that everyone will have an opinion, some liking the styles, some not, I have to say I’m on the ‘not’ side.

At first I thought I was having a flashback to the 1970s leisure suits, though they were mostly powder blue, whereas these are… well, I’m not quite sure. The only thing I am sure of is that they certainly don’t appear to be fitting for the national Olympic team, but rather more in line with surplus army fatigues confiscated post-war on Easter Island, or, at best, adequate for a Saturday morning at Vic Tanny’s.

Suddenly, the flashbacks return and I see visions of the bargain basement at Woolworths… or was it the BiWay? No, wait, it may have been Kresge’s, K-Mart, or the Giant Tiger.

No, to be fair, Giant Tiger has some pretty decent stuff, comparatively speaking.

And what’s with the headband on the David Cassidy lookalike? Even Shirley Partridge wouldn’t have dressed her band of kid-musicians in this gear. I’m fairly sure that if Keith turned up on the psychedelic Partridge bus in this hippy garb, Danny would have to call in Mr. Kincaid for a man to boy chat.

But then these are, apparently, eco-friendly and organic. (Isn’t it de rigueur for everything to be eco-friendly, green, and organic these days?) I guess our bold red and white Canuck combo doesn’t cut it anymore, perhaps not eco-Canadian enough, but the clincher has to be that the materials used in these leisure suits help keep out the Chinese smog.

Say what?

“Designers have incorporated an element into the gear, called a B-Tube, which could help protect athletes from Beijing’s pollution. The sun-blocking polyester tube can be worn as a head cover, hair band or mask to filter out the particulate matter in the air.”

How about a mini, portable oxygen tank designed as an add-on to the iPod? Something along the lines of Apple teaming up its MP3 player with a particular Nike running shoe. That’s been readily available for some time at the Apple Store.

Will someone please reincarnate George Orwell? This ain’t 1984 no mo’.

Our Canadian athletes’ suits also use materials such as bamboo, organic cotton, and cacona, which is, so I’ve read, derived from coconut.

Still with me?

If you’re like me, one can only wonder how eco-friendly it must have been shipping and transporting all these materials into Canada, but that’s not to be spoken of. It’s a far better marketing strategy to inflict all the vogue eco-everything adverts on today’s consumers, and forget the real-time pollution and environmental costs behind the vendors’ ‘green’ claims.

And if you think that isn’t enough, astrology has also been incorporated into the designs by using the number 8, considered a lucky number by the Chinese. Now, where in hell is Nancy Reagan when you need to decipher the zodiac? (If astrology was good enough for Ronnie’s presidency, then it must surely be good enough for Canada’s Olympic team, don’t you think?)

Good grief, now we’re relying on astrology when we have the top Canadian athletes representing the country?

Of course, I must be showing my age, or, at the very least, behind the times.

Really, who am I to prefer sleek red and white uniforms over ’70s leisure suits?

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