A few hours after Zsuzsanna and I touched down in Vancouver, Clara Hughes captured Canada’s 12th medal of the Games, finishing off her legendary Olympic career with an extraordinary exclamation point.

Before the day was out, Canadian women added three more medals to our tally, and you could feel the buzz building across this city—including at the Athletes’ Village, which we toured with Rick Hansen, and at the Downtown Eastside Olympic celebration, where we bumped into Canadian medallists Maelle Ricker and Mike Robertson.

At the Pacific Coliseum, Vicent, Roberge, St-Gelais, and Gregg took silver in the 3000-metre short-track relay. Up at Whistler, Canada won gold and silver  in the paradoxically-named women’s two-man bobsleigh—with Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse beating Helen Upperton and Ann Brown by just 85-100ths of a second.

And then there was hockey.

The 18,000 of us in Canada Hockey Place were treated to an incredible display of Canadian dominance, as our men’s hockey team skated to a 7-3 win over the Russians.

The energy in the stadium was nearly overwhelming, as the barrage of Canadian goals brought us repeatedly to our feet. Still, some of the night’s proudest applause was reserved for ice dance gold medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who were in the stands and featured on the big screen.

There’s no doubt in my mind — if our guys play like they did tonight, gold is within our grasp, as it is for the women’s team. I’ll be at their gold-medal game today, cheering them on.

Go Canada!

Michael Ignatieff will be blogging and tweeting his experiences during the Vancouver Olympic Games. Check back here for updates!