The Happiness Ambassadors kept quiet this time.

The advance team of vehicles (known to torch relay organizers as Happy One and Happy Two) are decked out with blaring music and dancers to rev up the crowds as the torch relay approaches. But when they arrived at this rural Indian reserve, they pulled off to the side to let Brooke Bobb-Reid's personal warm-up crew take over.

On Seabird Island, Ms. Bobb-Reid ran past Chehalis drummers and through an arch of war-canoe paddles held aloft by her teammates. About one-third of the Island's 1,000 residents turned out to cheer her on.

She then dropped to her knees before a platform of native elders and leaders.

The unaffected gesture of respect captures why she was chosen to represent the Seabird Indian Band in the torch relay.

At just 16, she's already marked as a role model for her community.

"She has an inner strength shining through," explained RCMP Constable Niki Charlie, who pulls with Ms. Bobb-Reid on the women's paddle team out of Chehalis. She's watched Ms. Bobb-Reid inspire the younger paddlers while soaking up what she can learn from more experienced ones.

"She's dedicated to being a better paddler every time she is out."

Both her parents died when she was young - her father from cancer, her mother from a brain aneurysm. She left the city and came here to this rural reserve in the upper Fraser Valley when she was seven to be raised by her grandparents, who both attended residential schools.

On the surface, it doesn't sound like a recipe for success but Ms. Bobb-Reid seems untouched by the challenges faced by so many aboriginal youth. She's an honours student who spends most of her free time training for the war-canoe competitions. She speaks the Halq'emeylem language but has now switched to French immersion to improve her odds of getting into university.

Her creed comes from rowing: "No negative thoughts or the canoe will get heavy," said Ms. Bobb-Reid.

Her grandfather, Lyle Bobb, doesn't have much good to say about his own schooling but he insists that his granddaughter attends to hers. "She has to finish her homework before she goes out."

Behind that stern manner, Mr. Bobb was full of pride Sunday. "Since she was little, she was a leader," he said.

Constable Charlie, a member of the RCMP's First Nations Policing Section in the Fraser Valley, said the encouragement at home has helped keep Ms. Bobb-Reid focused.

"She comes from a healthy home and she understands she is accountable - that if she doesn't behave, it reflects on her grandparents."

Her extended family - from the reserve and from her rowing crew - was out in force yesterday. Few in the crowd wore the Olympic clothing so popular in other communities. Instead, they turned out in embroidered blankets, cedar hats with feathered spinners, and dresses weighed down with hundreds of bells.

Ms. Bobb-Reid wore the standard torchbearer's uniform, but eagle feathers were woven in her braids and she wore a bear's claw from her grandfather around her neck.

"It shows where I come from and who I am," she said.

It is the second time the torch relay has come to this bucolic Fraser Valley community. Last September under a hot sun, the torch relay team used Seabird Island as part of their test run for the relay.

This time, the air was chilled and the sun stayed hidden behind a solid bank of clouds that hid the tops of the snow-covered coastal mountains.

It didn't diminish Tyrone McNeil's enthusiasm. The vice-president of the Sto:Lo Tribal Council said he was pleased at VANOC's efforts to recognize aboriginal people in the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

And he hopes the Games will leave a legacy in communities like this one - a motivation for young people to get active in sports.

"Too many youth are sitting still with only their fingers moving in front of computers, phones and games," he said. "Sports get us off our butts and move the body."

As the crowd of about 300 gathered at the torch event in his home community, they didn't need torch sponsor Coke's Happiness Herald to stir them up.

Ms. Bobb-Reid passed the relay to another Seabird youth, Chanea Gabriel, a powwow dancer wearing a cedar hat, who danced off the reserve accompanied by her own crew of drummers and singers.