Bronze The Parliament

Depending on how you look at things, there's good and there's bad news when it comes to Canada's performance in London.

Let's start with the good. There's the 18 medals of course. This matches Beijing so the country didn't take a step back on that. So far, this is good for 12th overall. 12th is not bad considering the larger nations - who pour more money into sports - ahead of us. It would be nice that Canada would be kick as to the point of passing Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and South Korea (USA, China and Russia are an impossibility) but we have to be realistic.

Canada needs to perform within itself and aiming for 20-25 medals in my humble opinion is feasible given the nation's wealth and population.

The other good piece of news is winning the bronze in women's soccer. Coulda hadda a chance at gold but it wasn't in the stars. I have to say it's one of our most impressive medals in history.

There was almost an equally impressive (bronze again) medal when the 4x100 relay team came in (a distant) third behind Jamaica and USA only to be disqualified because one of the runners had his foot on the line.

Canada doesn't do team sports (except for hockey of course) well at all. This should change if you want to improve your medal count and stature as a sports power.

So Canada, for now, ends up with 1 gold, 5 silver and 12 bronze.

Now for the bad.

With 1 gold medal - in trampoline - Canada's ranking drops to 35th. Jamaica. Poor Jamaica crashes in with 4 gold medals for heaven's sake. Good on them for picking a sport they excel at and mastering it. Maybe Canada should do the same? It's useless to send a fencing team that never wins a medal.

Other sports notables ahead of Canada? Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran, Belarus, food-starved North Korea, Kenya and Azerbaijan.

We're tied with, just saying, Grenada.

This not only not good enough. It's unacceptable. Would it change if the medal were in the 100m dash? It would be a start but still not enough. Would you trade the 18 for, say, 4 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze?

We're the Bronze Nation. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Let's celebrate it. No sense in crying over our gold medal demons.

Start by bronzing parts of Parliament. 'Welcome to Canada where we do bronze better than most! We're not the best because that wouldn't be "Canadian" but we sure know how to be third!"

Congrats to out medalists.

We're close. One day those bronzes will turn to silver and then gold! Like in Vancouver.

Always remember folks:

At least we're not American!

That's what she said!