WHISTLER, B.C. - If there's one memory the world took away from Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, it was the sea of red that washed over the country.
The mittens and maple leaves may be the only red anyone remembers.
As the international spotlight on Canada faded to black on Sunday night, Games organizers said they believe their budget is likely to be in the black as well.
It will be months before the final numbers are known, but the organizing committee said they are optimistic their $1.75 billion budget will balance.
"I think we will have a surplus, just by the fact that there's no way we are going to be exactly balanced to the penny," said Dave Cobb, deputy chief executive officer of the organizing committee, known as VANOC.
"We're either going to be a little bit below or a little bit better and we're very confident now we will be better."
Cobb said balancing the budget will still require an extraordinary payment from the International Olympic Committee, who agreed to contribute to VANOC's coffers after they were unable to sign up all of the hoped for international sponsors for the Games.
But Cobb said he thinks the IOC will view it as money well spent.
"The IOC is extremely pleased with how the Games went," he said.
So is the International Paralympic Committee.
Despite cloudy skies and dropping temperatures, thousands packed the celebration plaza in Whistler on Sunday night for the final moments of the Paralympics.
Athletes cheerfully entered along a parade route lined with hundreds more who couldn't get tickets to the sold out event.
Canada's golden girl at the Games, Lauren Woolstencroft, who won five gold medals, carried the flag into the ceremonies on behalf of the Canadian team.
The evening ended with a burst of fireworks over the village, a final show of spirit from a country Sir Philip Craven said he knew would embrace the Games all along.
"We have seen great feats of daring, of endurance and of skill," the president of the IPC said in his final remarks, calling the 2010 Games the "best ever."
"But the Paralympic Winter Games are not only about supreme athletic performance. They are about a community, about a far reaching and extended family."
As he officially declared Canada's first Paralympic Games closed, the crowd booed.
It's been seven years since Vancouver and Whistler, B.C. won the bid to host both events and the head of the committee said every minute was worth it for him.
"Canada's Games are over - we did it!" John Furlong, VANOC's CEO, said at the closing ceremonies.
"If we have had success, it was because all 33 million Canadians for an instant became loyal trusted team mates. We were 'Team Canada - Equipe Canada' - not the few but the many. We did this together - all of us living every moment and all the drama like we ourselves were the athletes."
Moments after he bid his formal farewell to journey of these Games, Furlong began another - a flight to Georgia to attend the memorial service for a luger killed on the first day of the 2010 Games.
The Games will travel next to Sochi, Russia in 2014. While the Russian team faltered at the Winter Olympics, at the Paralympics, they were on top of the medal count.
More than 25,000 volunteers, 16,000 security officers, over 7,000 athletes and officials and hundreds of thousands of spectators were part of the two Games.
Billions more were watching on television across the country and around the world.
There was also some success for those who didn't cheer for the Games but against them.
Hundreds took to the street in protest of the Olympics and a tent city set up to draw attention to homelessness saw government officials actually find homes for 35 people.
Even Mother Nature was won over in the end, even if it took helicopters to dump snow on a barren Cypress Mountain and a constant rejigging of the Paralympic alpine schedule.
"I think I'll be the first guy to run both Summer and Winter Games, all in two months," joked Tim Gayda, vice president of sport for the Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic organizing committee.
The fever that inflamed the nation during the 17 days of the Olympics cooled during the Paralympic Games, but both were embraced by Canada in a way beyond anyone's expectations.
For some Paralympians, having to wriggle out of the bear hug was the hardest part of their experience.
Canada's failure to win a medal in sledge hockey was crushing, said defenceman said Adam Dixon.
"We wanted to at least walk out with our pride and walk out with a souvenir to go home with."
But Canadians weren't too picky about who they were cheering.
Around 230,000 tickets of the 250,000 available were sold for the Paralympics, with several events sold out even before the Games began.
The Paralympics also set records for television coverage.
Early Sunday morning at the place where thousands of people had once stood crushed against a chainlink fence to see the Olympic and Paralympic cauldron, there were only four scattered coffee cups and three police officers watching clouds race over the north shore mountains.
As a bus driver boarded his bus for Whistler, he waved out to a volunteer.
"If I don't see ya, have a good one" he drawled.
"It's been fun."