Ambassatours lends Olympians a helping hand

Retrieved from: www.travelpress.com March 2010

Is Halifax-based tour operator Ambassatours Gray Line partly responsible for some of the medals that Canadian Olympians won in the Winter Olympics? Well, it may have provided a helping hand or two. The company was driving 10 of the men's and two of the women's Olympic hockey teams to practices, social events and the games themselves in Vancouver, including the gold-medal winning women's team game and the gold-medal winning men's team game. Ambassatours had 13 vehicles in Vancouver and was contracted to carry some of the highest-profile athletes at the Olympics, says company president Dennis Campbell. "Very exciting for Canada and very exciting for our company to think it was Sidney Crosby, also from Nova Scotia, that got the team's winning goal in overtime. It doesn't get anymore exciting that this!"

And company vice-president Gary Powell, who was in Vancouver along with 32 of the company's drivers, at the beginning of the games put a shiny Olympic loonie under the mats on each of the Canadian hockey teams' motorcoaches. "I am not superstitious and I wasn't sure if it would help or not, but I wanted to do everything in my control to bring luck to our Canadian teams," says Powell. "And today I am glad I did it. This is a very exciting day," Powell says. "I took photographs placing the coins on the bus and of the team motorcoaches themselves. It will be a real memento for our company to place on our web site which I will do when I return home to Halifax."