Canadian Olympic clothes made by HBC are popular with Italians

There are HBC stores set up at both the British Columbia Canada Place as well as Canada House. I took this picture of a gaggle of young Italian Olympic Village volunteers wearing the Canada hats that are available. We think they're a bit silly looking, but it turns out that the Italians really do love them (Robert's Flickr stream will have a better picture later). In any case, whether during regular public hours or even at the Whistler Apres event where I took the picture, the HBC stores are packed and Canadian gear is flying off the shelves. In part it's a love of Canada and the excitement of the next Games being there, but HBC has really put together a fantastic selection of clothes. Even the green has grown on me.

The people running the HBC store here at BC Canada Place have been great. We're looking forward to meeting with some of them again when we get back to Vancouver, although most are actually from Toronto and Quebec.

We also went to visit the HBC store at Canada House. I took a short video of Gita, who's in charge of the stores here in Torino. She's been here since the end of January, and working really hard every day. The main thing she misses from Canada? Her husband, of course!