LADYSMITH, B.C. - Hundreds of children and adults dressed as ghouls, goblins, anteaters and coal miners, all lit by a Halloween full moon, greeted Olympic torchbearers in this Vancouver Island community on Saturday.

Chanting "Go Canada Go'' and singing "O'Canada,'' Ladysmith residents were in a festive mood as the relay for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics stopped in their town.

One mother said she put trick-or-treating on hold because her kids were more excited about the torch than Halloween.

Outside of a local Royal Canadian Legion branch, about 10 people were dressed up like coal miners to welcome the torch and party the night away.

"There's a whole shift of us,'' said Floyd Reynolds, his face painted black and wearing a hard hat complete with a miners light.

Ladysmith is known as one of Vancouver Island's historic coal mining towns.

The torch was scheduled to end its second day with a large community celebration in Nanaimo.

The relay ahead of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics started in Victoria on Friday, beginning a 106-day relay that will visit more than a thousand communities by the time it arrives at the opening ceremonies on Feb. 12.

Earlier on Saturday, torchbearers ran, rolled and even flew through several Vancouver Island towns.

The flame visited the Fort Rodd Hill national historic site in Colwood, located west of Victoria, where it was welcomed by members of the Royal Canadian Legion, the 5th B.C. Field Regiment's brass band and spectators dressed in military period dress.

Jeff Hollands, one of 120 veterans carrying the torch, rode his wheelchair to Fort Rodd Hill, the site of a 19th-century coast artillery fort.

"What an honour to represent my country,'' said Hollands. "It was just an unbelievable experience.''

Hollands said he trained for his leg on the relay by lifting milk jugs.

Sixteen-year-old Annie Ewart, an aspiring road racer who competed in the Canada games in Prince Edward Island last summer, is one of several cyclists to carry the torch.

"It was really cool,'' she said. "It was awesome to be able to take the torch while riding my bike.''

The torch won't just be carried by foot as it follows the winding relay route through all of Canada's provinces and territories and into the Far North, with relay organizers including several so-called ``alternate modes of transportation.''

The torch was paddled across a lake by a team of Olympic rowers on its first day, and later on Saturday it was flown by seaplane.

On Sunday, it will be carried on a skateboard and on a logging truck.

And as it travels through Canada's North, it will be pulled by dogsled, moved along the snow on a polar bear skin also pulled by a dog, and transported on an Inuit kayak.

In Duncan, about 60 kilometres north of Victoria, hundreds of people lined both sides of a street near the community's historic downtown train station to cheer on the Olympic torchbearers.

Virginia Szabo draped herself in a huge Canadian flag that looked like a cape as her brother Jared ran past her carrying the Olympic torch.

Jared's mother, Lori Robb-Szabo, said her son could barely contain his emotions.

"Hyped. Absolutely hyped,'' she said.

Robb-Szabo said her son is a sports nut who was chosen by his employer, B.C. Hydro, to carry the torch.

The Olympic flame arrived in Canada on Friday after it was lit in Greece and ran around that country for a week. It was ignited in the ruins of an ancient temple in Olympia and handed over to Canadians in Athens.

The relay route is 45,000 kilometres, making it the longest domestic relay in Olympic history, and it will be for many Canadians the only chance to experience the Games in person.

The first day of the relay was capped by a protest involving several hundred people in downtown Victoria on Friday night, forcing security officials to divert the route and cancel the runs of several torchbearers.