pt. 1: from Hoedown to Showdown
This week will mark the T-minus two year countdown to the XVI Olympic Winter Games here in Vancouver. This page, like a number of media outlets, is focussing a modicum of attention on this millstone...er...milestone, but I think I'm one of the few who's not a division of Bell Globemedia. Also, I'm not about to gush about how much better driving the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whistler is.
This two-year countdown can be framed in another event this week, the 20th anniversary of Calgary's Winter Olympics. This page lived in Calgary during that period, and if I could sum up the difference between the Games of 1988 and the Games of 2010 it would be like this: Calgary used the Olympics to build Calgary, while Vancouver is being used to build the Olympics. In 1981, Calgary wanted a light rail transit system, freeway improvements, and an NHL-calibre arena. In 2003, when Vancouver bid for the 2010 games, City Hall wanted mass transit in the Broadway Corridor and social housing. Why did Calgary end up filling its Olympic wish list while we ended up stuck with mass evictions and the Canada Line?
For one thing, Calgary, unlike Vancouver, has a Ward system at City Hall where Aldermen are directly held accountable by their own constituents, unlike the vicious little thugs who hide behing the NPA banner at 12th and Cambie. The upshot is that the ward system produces decisions that veer towards the pragmatic and the non-partisan, as opposed to the psychotic neoconservative machinations of Vancouver's 'Non-Partisan' Association (NPA). The NPA's bloodless coup in 2005 (aided and abetted by the phantom 'James' Green candidacy) spelled the end of the Vision Vancouver/COPE alliance, which, while shaky, would have provided far more oversight and demanded far more accountability from VANOC than the right-wing, free-market, Developers-Gone-Wild prediliction of the NPA.
In the run-up to the 2003 referrendum on the Olympic bid, Larry Campbell and Jim Green twisted the arms of VANOC to gain several concessions on Social Housing and the impact of the Games on Vancouver. Imagine if someone still had the authourity to make sure those concessions were implemented, as opposed to someone like Sam Sullivan idiotically spinning in his wheelchair with the Olympic flag. At the least, Vancouver could have had an Olympics about which we could have felt a little less ashamed, and a Games that actually did something for this city.
2 comments:
Interesting insight from out west on the Olympics... I hope that the people get the point across about the need to take the chance to improve the lives of those in need, as opposed to just wishing them away... I fear it is the latter more that we are seeing today.
On a seperate subject, the link below may or may not be of interesrt to you... It is an example of our friends down south, and a disturbing trend towards abuses by law enforecement on their citizens. Perhaps a couple of messages on the board there will send the message from all that this is unacceptable behaviour (pretty bad when a "right-of-centre" kind of guy like me is incensed by this atrocious behaviour).
http://www.the-review.com/news/article/3257791?page=0
Whoops, here is the link.
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