Somewhere in Toronto today there’s a 10-year-old kid who got a second lease on life at World Youth Day 2002. Dr. Katherine Rouleau remembers that premature baby with all the awe and confusion doctors regularly bring to miracles.

“We had a baby who was quite sick. Actually, it was a newborn of a couple who were so grateful that their premature child had survived that they showed up at Downsview at the crack of dawn in the sweltering heat,” recalled Rouleau.

Rouleau was medical director of World Youth Day 2002. On July 28 a decade ago she had 800,000 potential patients corralled into an open field at the north end of Toronto. Many of them had endured a night of cold and rain, praying the Divine Office and singing through the night. Under the morning sun, people continued streaming in. And then it was raining again as Pope John Paul II arrived to celebrate Mass with them.

World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto was not a show, a rave party, a protest or photo opportunity. It was an invitation and a proposal for something new. Against a global background of terror and fear, economic collapse in many countries and ecclesial scandals, World Youth Day 2002 presented a bold, alternative vision of compelling beauty, hope and joy.

We may choose to speak of our World Youth Days as something in the past — that brightened the shadows and monotony of our lives at one shining moment in history in 2002. Some may wish to call those golden days of July 2002 “Camelot” moments. That is one way to consider the WYD — fading memories of an extraordinary moment in Canadian  history.