Sport is cultural. What the star athlete does helps to define the culture. What the star athlete does on a Canadian team, especially if he or she is Canadian, helps define Canadian-ness.

I feel lucky to live at a time when the dominant tennis players are Venus and Serena Williams. And to have lived through the success of a whole slew of boxers and feel I could invest emotionally and psychologically in their victories, and identify with them in their struggles.

Keep on being a star in your own right. Keep on defining yourself. Don't be defined by others.

A rural Venus, Selah rises from thegold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweepspetals of water from her skin. At once,clouds begin to sob for such beauty.Clothing drops like leaves."No one makes poetry,my Mme.Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,"I whisper. She smiles: "We'll shape it withour souls."Desire illuminates the dark manuscriptof our skin with beetles and butterflies.After the lightning and rain has ceased,after the lightning and rain of lovemakinghas ceased, Selah will dive again into thesunflower-open river.

The only good produced by the disappearance of Africville was the appearance of a conscious black nationalism … In this regard, Consecrated Ground is the heir of fierce, vengeful, and epic activism.

I still think that there's some kind of psychological investment in black athletes carrying the flag for "us" at times. So, sports [remains a] metaphor for struggle and triumph and flair.

I suppose the "dilemma" might come up if I see a black athlete from the U.S. squaring off against a white Canadian athlete. Who do I want to identify with? I certainly will not and cannot say that race determines how I see competition. I'm certainly aware of how race plays into the way others see and portray competition some times, but I don't have to invest in it that way myself. Unless it's boxing.