Hugues Gregoire spent the past 12 months of his life sworn to secrecy, meticulously combing over every detail of a special project, the specifics of which he was forbidden from discussing with family, friends and even colleagues at Bombardier Inc.
Last week in Whistler, British Columbia, Gregoire finally got to show them, as well as the rest of Canada, what he'd been up to, as the world got its first look at the Olympic torch designed specially for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.
"The hardest part was keeping everything a secret ... and figuring how to confine the design to just the team," said Gregoire, Bombardier's lead project engineer for the 2010 Olympic torch.
Over the coming year, Montreal-based Bombardier, best known for its airplanes and subway cars, will produce more than 12,000 of the stainless-steel and composite-fiber torches.
There will be one for every torchbearer who will help ferry the flame along its grueling 106-day, 28,000-mile, pan-Canadian trek.
Indeed, this is no ordinary torch.
To ensure the bright orange flame of the Olympics isn't extinguished during its journey, Bombardier engineers were forced to create a torch that is both elegant and durable -- one capable of withstanding the varied and often harsh environmental conditions of the Canadian wilderness.
"Protecting the flame and making sure that it withstood all the various elements that the Canadian winter is going to throw at it -- cold, wind, snow -- and the ability to maintain a nice, bright, visible flame, had a definite impact on the final design," said Tim Fagan, lead designer on the project.
Bombardier constructed a special wind tunnel at its research labs in Montreal to ensure the flame could withstand sustained winds of about 37 mph and gusts of more than 60 mph.
A second room was built and filled with nitrogen to test the torch in extremely cold conditions and high altitudes.
It took the team three months from its first meeting with officials with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to come up with a handful of concepts worthy of basic prototypes. Figuring out a design for the gas cylinder contained within each torch came next, followed by six months of testing and tweaking.
Skating, skiing and snowdrifts were given equal weight in the inspiration process as the team brainstormed themes that would influence the final design.
"We wanted to bring in design elements that would really represent the Canadian landscape," Fagan said. "As you move from top to bottom, the sweeping forms that you'll see in the torch itself evoke the trails left by a skier as he descends a hill, or skate blades on ice."
As for Gregoire, he's not planning on keeping one of the torches for himself as a personal reward.
"I will be proud 12,000 times," he said. "Whenever I see a torchbearer, almost glowing in the dark, proud to carry it, that's when I'll be proud of what we did. That's going to be my reward."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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