The VPD has flagging hopes

Vancouver Police made a surprise visit to the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA) on Thursday, showing up at 11 pm with a search warrant.

Although a group calling itself the Native Warriors Society has claimed responsibility for the theft of the Olympic flag from in front of City Hall three weeks ago, the VPD, responding to an "anonymous tip", thought they might find the flag in DERA's basement.

This was the first time DERA has been searched in its 34 year history.

Police spokesman Constable Tim Fanning has said the search was carried out at night to avoid the attention of protesters. Eight police officers apparently spent an hour searching the premises, took a few photos and left, sans flag.

Some activists have raised questions about why the raid took place under cover of darkness. Kim Kerr, the director of DERA, has called the raid a "political attack" against those campaigning for social housing in the lead-up to the 2010 Games.

The police claim they weren't targeting housing advocates. In a Vancouver Sun story, Constable Fanning is quoted as saying, "If we had been told that the flag was in a home in Shaughnessy we'd have gone there too."

The picture above is of a house in Shaughnessy, one of Vancouver's wealthier neighbourhoods. Do you really think police would show up there at 11 pm with the intention of searching their basement?

I met Kim Kerr in the fall and he told me, among other things, that DERA's basement contains a veritable archive of all legal actions that have taken place in the Downtown Eastside over the years.

The search indeed raises some eyebrows. Why did the VPD, already complaining of personnel shortages, send eight people to rifle through a basement for something they likely knew they wouldn't find there? What else might they have been looking for?

Perhaps someone should suggest to the VPD that the Olympic flag may have been gnome-napped. Any day now it might turn up in another photograph, held by different masked men in a far-flung place.

Photo courtesy of Squeaky Marmot.

Watch your language!

There's a small family-owned pizza place in downtown Vancouver called Olympic Pizza. The restaurant has operated under this name for 15 years. Last year, the restaurant came under fire from the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) for infringing on the Olympic trademark. After public outcry and repeated statements from the family that they would fight VANOC tooth and nail for use of the name, VANOC backed down. The committee is now distinguishing between established companies and recent startups who make use of the Olympic name or other names that might confuse people into thinking a business is associated with the 'official' Olympics. Their intent is to put a stop to ambush marketing by companies who want to sell items with Olympic slogans on them without becoming official Games sponsors.

I've blogged about this before, but what's particularly interesting to me now is the kind of resistance to VANOC's use of the Canadian Trademarks Act that we're seeing from trademark lawyers themselves.

In a March 29th Vancouver Sun story, Jeff Lee writes that some trademark specialists and members of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada feel Olympic organizers are perverting the original intent of the official marks section of the Trademark Act.

Dan Bereskin, a trademark lawyer in Toronto, is quoted as saying, "The legislation that was enacted was supposed to benefit real public authorities that might have symbols or marks that were unique to them, and the imitation of which would normally be considered to be improper. I don't think they had in mind that so-called public authorities would get involved in merchandising activities."

Apparently, in the lead up to the Calgary Winter Games, the Olympic organizing committee clamped down on the use of "Calgary '88" on unofficial merchandise. I can understand the reasoning behind this. VANOC has gone one step further, outlawing use of the word "winter" in conjunction with other Olympic "trademarks" or symbols. But winter is a season! Or it was the last time I checked.

According to the folks at TDH Strategies, Stéphane Dion could well find himself in trouble for using some key Olympic rallying cries. All in jest, really.

Check out the Appropriation Art website for more info on fair use and artistic freedom.

The image of the Olympic crossword puzzle comes courtesy of Paul Conneally. Thanks Paul!

Virtual Dissent

The folks at Only Magazine, formerly Terminal City, have designed a downloadable riot clock widget in honour of Vancouver's new Olympic countdown clock. Instead of watching the days, hours and minutes count down to the opening of the 2010 Games you can watch a pint-sized version of the original count down to some sort of riot from the comfort of your Mac (sorry PC-users, the widget is only available on Macs). But Only Magazine wants you to know they don't advocate real riots, just virtual ones.

Apparently, the magazine was investigated by the Vancouver police for inciting a riot that took place following the Vancouver Canucks' loss of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1994.

Only Magazine calls their Olympic clock a "replacement" for the "monolithic eyesore" that sits on the lawn of the VAG. The widget doesn't require a 24/7 security guard or anti-graffiti coating and it doesn't come with a hefty price tag. Irony alert! The magazine wants us to think of all the "wondrous" things the Games will be bringing to the city while we watch our widget clocks tick away.

I like the idea of this widget although I'm not sure why...there's something appealing to me about a silent, virtual protest. There have been many effusive comments about the widget on message boards. Lovers of the hyperreal all! The spirit of Baudrillard seems to be permeating my recent posts!

Only Magazine is also responsible for the first all-Vancouver music podcast. You can read about the history of the magazine here.

New Additions

Despite RCMP Chief Superintendent Bob Harriman's recent statements in the Globe and Mail that there will be "no new technologies...employed during the Olympics" and that the Games won't be "a showcase for new stuff," it looks like the Vancouver Police department has invested in at least one "armoured rescue vehicle" (read: tank) in an attempt to curb security threats during the Games.

The tank will be bullet and small explosive proof, says Chief Constable Jamie Graham in the Georgia Straight.

Apparently, the tank will only be used by the VPD's Emergency Response or SWAT team. It's doubtful you'll see regular members of the VPD taking this mean machine out on the town. They'll have to make do with their horses.

Also in the Straight, Sgt. Norm Webster charmingly spins the "unassuming" tank as a "rescue vehicle" intended to "protect our citizens." Who gets rescued in a tank? Furthermore, how will the knowledge that the VPD has one tank in its fleet make the common citizen feel any safer? I think that if we need to consider buying tanks to create an aura of safety in this city during the Games, perhaps the Games shouldn't be happening here....

I can't help but feel that all this talk of terrorist threats during the Games is a subtle mask for the types of threats VANOC etc know they can anticipate. And the use of a tank, even as a symbol, to quell dissent is very disturbing.

The Straight makes the links I'm talking about here. The article ends with, "Graham and Webster didn’t tell the board what kind of situations before and during the Olympics will require the use of this vehicle. Anti-poverty, environmental, and aboriginal groups have vowed to step up protests against the games."

You can read more about the new addition to the Vancouver Police force on Bear604's blog from March 16th.

The photo of the tank comes from Superciliousness.

Neighbourhood Energy Utility

The city of Vancouver is currently trying to figure out how to supply heat and hot water to 15,000 people in the Southwest False Creek area, which includes the new Olympic Village. To stick with the new green theme for the Village construction, they're looking at alternative energy sources.

The frontrunner? Wood pellet biomass energy. Creating biomass energy involves burning wood pellets in an incinerator to generate heat. The process has some environmental advantages but also some striking downsides. The process is considered to be carbon neutral but some locals in the area are raising concerns about the process. It will produce effluent that will likely blow towards the east end of False Creek. The process will also require 6,000 tonnes of wood pellets to be trucked in to the neighbourhood. Another concern is particulate production, but local engineers are downgrading this concern by saying that most particulates will be removed in the process by a precipitator.

Engineer Chris Baber is in charge of the project, named the neighbourhood energy utility or NEU. Baber says biomass is the greenest option for providing heat and hot water to residents.

The city has also considered capturing heat from the neighbourhood's sewer lines. This idea of recycling heat is a popular one, yet technically challenging.

Roger Bayley, the architect who is coordinating the project, is in favor of recycling heat from sewer lines. He has been raising concerns about the biomass option among various business groups and city council.

In a Vancouver Sun article from March 9th, Bayley says the proposed biomass project could lead to an "unwarranted increase in emissions," adding that "the use of a purchased and trucked product [is] not in keeping with the standards of sustainability for the community that sought to use 'local' and cheap sources of energy available at the site."

The city will be seeking public input on 'green' energy options until March 31st. Have a say: the NEU model of locally generated alternative energy may be replicated in other neighbourhoods if it is successful.

The photo above was taken by Steve Roe.

Illuminating Stuff

From the sounds of it, the crowd that showed up to the Olympic and Paralympic flag illuminating ceremony on Monday wasn’t quite the demographic that VANOC was anticipating. Of the 200 + people on the scene, a majority were Games protestors. The Vancouver Police Emergency Response Team was on hand, a handful of its members armed with video cameras to catch the actions of any rabblerousers. In recent years, video cameras have become standard issue at protests. Protestors carry them not only to document an action but also as a way of communicating to the police and the powers that be that they can be held accountable for their actions. Oh, how I wish I’d been on hand to take a photo of a protestor filming a police officer filming a protestor. Somehow, I think French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died this week, would have enjoyed such a scene. R.I.P. Baudrillard!

Ever since the Olympic clock unveiling of February 12th, the police have been upping the ante on security. On Monday, everyone even remotely close to the illumination ceremony was searched, including the media! VANOC has also insisted that crowd-control fencing be set up at all events held in the open to separate the public from dignitaries.

In a Macleans article about the flag illuminating ceremony, it says that two arrests were made for breach of peace.

This from a Canoe story on the ceremony:

“Vancouver police Constable Tim Fanning says the intensified police presence at the event wasn’t coming out of the Olympic security budget.”

So all these extra security measures the police are taking aren’t part of the security budget for the Olympics? I assume this means the money is coming from the public. I for one would rather not be fleeced for security measures I find insulting and dehumanizing.

In related news, the Olympic countdown clock in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery was spraypainted with the words “Free Betty” (in reference to Betty Krawczyk, the environmental protestor recently sentenced to ten months in prison for breaching a court order) eight times on Monday, despite the fact that 24-hour security was supposedly hired last month to protect the clock. Can you imagine having that job for the next three years?

Apprently, VANOC and the clockmakers had amazing foresight on this one. The clock was coated with a special anti-graffiti coating.

The photo of the woman with the makeshift megaphone was taken by Jakeinvan.

Are promise and commitment synonyms?

In a March 7th Vancouver Sun story, Frances Bula writes about the 24 recommendations tabled by the Vancouver Olympics' housing roundtable, a group comprised of representatives of social agencies, developers and government officials. So far, I haven't come across a copy of all of the recommendations online, but to boil it down to its main points, I'll be quoting from Bula's article:

"The city requires in its three inner city neighbourhoods of the Downtown Eastside, downtown south and Mount Pleasant:

*3,000 housing units, 80 per cent of them to be new construction, for low-income residents.
*250 housing units for temporary Games workers, to be converted to social housing afterwards.
*300 shelter beds for young people likely to flock to the city during the Games.
*An increase in the subsidy for the 250 social-housing units at the Olympic Village so more low-income people can live in them.

I think the recommendations sound great on paper, but what of implementing them? The suggested cost to meet the above goals has been estimated at $1 billion. And, as Bula writes, "VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee) has no financial ability to pay for that kind of goal and no legal power to force governments to meet it."

Adding insult to injury, the folks at Relentlessly Progressive Economics have pointed out that the recent recommendations are strikingly similar to those proposed in the BC Solutions Budget for 2004 after Vancouver won its Olympics bid, and we all know how readily these weren't implemented.

Vancouver is the first city to put an "inner-city inclusivity" promise in its Bid and the language used in the promise makes it sound like a commitment.

The Vancouver Olympics' housing roundtable suggested that a large chunk of the money for social-housing will have to come from private partnerships.

Ken Dobell, special advisor to Gordon Campbell, just issued a report that analyzes what these partnerships might look like. Vancouver city council will be addressing the report on Tuesday.

According to another Vancouver Sun story, Dobell was paid $300,000 to compile the report. The Sun seems to think this could be money well spent.

About the partnerships, the Sun writes, " The Vancouver Homelessness Limited Partnership, which would raise $60 million in equity and subordinated debt to help develop supportive housing; and the Vancouver Homelessness Foundation, a charitable organization that would acquire properties donated by the city to lease back to the partnership.

If it all goes according to plan, Vancouver will have a stock of 3,000 units of supportive housing in a decade, which might not make homelessness disappear entirely, but would be a vast improvement over the existing situation."

The photo above was taken by MJ Milloy.

A Premium on Language

On Friday, March 2nd, Industry Minister Maxime Bernier introduced a bill that so far has received little attention. I learned about it through University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist's blog.

Bill C-47, or the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act, was supposedly created to deal with ambush marketing, or businesses that hawk unofficial Olympic wares by posing as Games sponsors.

The reach of this bill would be pretty immense and could grant Vancouver Olympic organizers considerable power to control the language that is used to even describe the 2010 Olympics.

The media would be exempt from Bill C-47, but it's not clear what effect the bill could have on independent media and on those seeking to criticize or parody the Olympics. As long as someone isn't trying to sell something that might seem to be associated with the Games, it seems the bill can't clamp down too hard on parody or criticism, but this area remains a little hazy.

I recommend you take a look at some of the verboten phrases and expressions listed at the bottom of the bill . Apparently, the phrases and/or expressions have to be used in conjunction with a registered Olympic symbol for the user to be in dangerous territory. Only the courts would be able to decide if someone has taken too many 'liberties' with 'Olympic language.'

As if this bill doesn't already seem surreal enough, Geist notes that it contains a measure that would allow "a court [to] order all the goods using the marks to be seized by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, as if public exposure to non-authorized Olympic goods were a public safety issue."

Simply amazing.

I've respectfully borrowed the image above from TrufflePig.

Beloved 'Eco-Granny' Hit Hard

Yesterday, beloved Vancouver environmental activist Betty Krawczyk received her seventh conviction for environmental protest. Krawczyk was hit with a 10-month sentence for returning three times to protest the Sea-to-Sky Improvement Project at Eagle Ridge Bluffs in breach of a court order.

Krawczyk is 78 years old.

She was charged with criminal contempt of court, a severe sentence for civil disobedience in the minds of many.

According to deputy Green Party leader Adriane Carr, mischief would have been a more appropriate charge.

"This is a civil society and in any civil society and in any real democracy the right of citizens to protest in non-violent civil disobedience is a treasured honour, " Carr is quoted as saying in the The Globe and Mail. (Please forgive the Globe's headline typo...they're trying.)

Hear, hear!

Although I had wanted to attend the sentencing, a heavy workload prevented me from making my way down to the B.C. Supreme Court. Apparently, the scene at the court house was one of complete chaos. There was a heavy police presence and visitors to the court had to go through myriad security checks to gain entry to the courtroom. Many supporters were held up in security and never managed to enter the courtroom.

Betty's sentence comes hot on the heals of the death of native elder Harriet Nahanee. Harriet was sent to jail for 14 days for protesting the Sea-to-Sky project. The court meted out this draconian punishment to a 71-year-old who was already in poor health for her unwillingness to apologize for committing contempt of court. While at the dismal Surrey Pretrial Centre, Nahanee developed pneumonia and quickly succumbed to the illness.

In reporting on Betty's sentence, a number of local news outlets, including 24 Hours (this story is not available online) and Metro Vancouver (also not up online), have published sentence comparisons, comparing the sentences recently doled out for peaceful civil disobedience to those handed down in recent years for offenses ranging from sexual interference with minors to hit and run killings. It's both striking and horrifying to see how heavy handed the government has become in punishing dissent.

Betty was maintaining a blog about environmental concerns and the Olympics, but I'm guessing it won't be updated in the near future. Her last entry was written the evening before her sentencing.

Rafe Mair has written a good piece in The Tyee that highlights many of Krawczyk and Nahanee's concerns.

In only semi-related news, someone has stolen the Olympic flag from in front of city hall. This comes as the International Olympic Committee has descended upon Vancouver to evaluate the city's preparation for the Games. You can read more about the mysterious theft here.

The photo of Betty K. comes courtesy of Seanthecon3000.

Five Ring Circus

The perpetual teenager in me usually responds well to your standard activist documentary but the journalist in me balks at how glaringly one-sided protest films tend to be. I recognize the desire to tell a story that doesn't often get exposure in mainstream media, but rarely is an issue so simplistic as to warrant only one side of a story being told.

I give credit to Conrad Schmidt, first-time filmmaker and producer of The Five Ring Circus: The Untold Story of the Vancouver Olympic Games. Schmidt and his girlfriend/editor Chantal Morin have spent two years chronicling the Olympic Bid Book promises broken by City Council and VANOC while following the growing discontent of local housing advocates and activists, environmentalists and academics.

Maybe I'm being unfair in my critique of the film as being overly one-sided. In an interview with The Tyee, Schmidt says he had a hard time getting the pro-Olympic perspective, especially from those in power. VANOC apparently refused to meet with the filmmaker.

Says Schmidt, "The big struggle in making this documentary was getting the "yes" side, the pro-Olympic side, to talk on camera. The Olympic committee will not do interviews with any unauthorized documentary --not just me, but respectable independent documentary filmmakers don't get interviews either.”

Well, maybe it's for the best that VANOC and city council members only appeared in press conference footage. Had Sam Sullivan been interviewed for the film, the man seated next to me might have exploded. Each time Sullivan's face appeared on the screen, my seatmate shouted variations on "spineless prick" in near tourettic fashion.

Schmidt does do a good job teasing some controversial statements out of the mouth of Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan. Corrigan is one of the most outspoken 'critics' (NB: Corrigan is in favour of the Olympics but has concerns about the current approach the city is taking.)

Corrigan criticizes what he calls the "strict framework of corporatization" under which the Games operates. His most compelling statement in the film comes when he talks about the issue of sustainability. "It's so laughable as to be offensive, " he says, as an image of tonnes of concrete is seen being poured for the foundation of the Olympic ice-skating venue, incidentally to be built on swamplands in Richmond.

Another issue I have with Five Ring Circus is just how embedded the filmmakers are in the events they're filming, again, a hallmark of activist films. The filmmakers are clearly a part of the communities they're covering and as such, have a kind of access to these communities that makes the film even less 'objective.'

There's something very scripted about a few key scenes in the film. After the Eagle Ridge Bluffs have been cleared of protesters, a lone protester is filmed running along the bluffs and into the middle of a construction scene, crawling on top of a bulldozer in an attempt to temporarily halt the highway construction.

The fact that the camera just happened to be there for this act of civil disobedience makes the film feel scripted. When 78-year-old environmental activist Betty Krawczyk returns to the bluffs to create a one-woman blockade, again, there's that forced sense of serendipity with the camera catching the 'spontaneous' action (incidentally, this scene is one of the high points of emotional resonance in the film as Krawczyk stands tall against the police and developers, shouting "this is a blockade" before being carted off by the police for protecting the land that she loves).

Another heavy-hitting scene is one in which anti-poverty committee activists barricade themselves in an empty apartment complex on Cambie, a building the protesters want to see turned into housing for at-risk women. A bus load of riot cops (no joke, they scramble out of a city bus like clowns packed into a Volkswagon) encircle the building, preventing the relay of food and water to those inside. Yet, amazingly, a camera person seems to be moving gracefully between the barricaded building and the protesters inside. I'm guessing two cameras may have been used to film this scene. Otherwise, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief this far.

My last caveat with the film is that, again, like so many activist film, it's preaching to the converted. Schmidt has said he wants to "wake up" people as to what's going on, yet the inherent insiderness of the film leads me to believe it will have limited appeal for those who don't count themselves in the 'discontented with the 2010 Olympics hullabaloo' camp. The film will be screening until March 8th at the Rio Theatre.

The Georgia Straight and the Republic of East Vancouver have both reviewed the film. Only Magazine has an interview with Schmidt here.

Betty Krawczyk will be sentenced on Monday for her involvement in the Eagle Ridge Bluffs protests. Apparently, the Crown is arguing for 9-15 months in prison! The sentencing is open to the public and will take place at 9am Monday, March 5th at the BC Supreme Court, 800 Smithe Street.

Social Housing Levy Comes Up Short

On February 15th, Vancouver City Council voted in a condo development levy that will require developers to pay a $15,000 fee for each unit of social housing lost to redevelopment.

All of this comes as developers scramble to buy up land in advance of the 2010 Olympics.

These units of social housing typically exist within single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, many of which are in the Downtown Eastside. The hotels, although by any estimation a substandard housing option (many are infested with bedbugs and offer one bathroom for up to a dozen residents, I’ve been told by former inhabitants), are the only thing shielding most residents from life on the streets.

In a Globe and Mail article from February 17th, the levy sounds like a positive development. But when you dig a little deeper, some problems become glaringly evident.

The levy falls under the Single Room Accommodation Bylaw, which, up until now, has required developers to pay $5,000 per unit (read: room) of social housing lost. This money is earmarked for a fund used to rebuild social housing elsewhere in the downtown core.

According to Kim Kerr, director of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) the levy, whether $5,000 or $15,000, is a drop in the bucket.

Kerr tells me it costs upwards of $100,000 to build one unit of social housing.

In San Francisco, a city where land is similarly precious, developers are charged $80,000 US for a room, says Kerr.

The Single Room Accommodation bylaw also stipulates that developers secure equivalent alternative housing for displaced residents.

This stipulation all too often falls by the wayside, argue Kerr and other Downtown Eastside activists.

In a recent CBC article, Linda Coady, vice president of sustainability for the Olympic organizing committee, claims the city is on track in building new social housing units.

“Since the bylaw was passed in 2003, the fee has generated $440,000 for the city’s replacement housing fund plus $60,000 in voluntary contributions,” Coady is quoted as saying.

The problem seems to be that the fund is sitting idle for some unknown reason.

In the last year, seventeen SRO hotels in the Downtown Eastside have been sold to developers.

While hundreds have been displaced, little has been tabled to deal with the increasing need for viable social housing.

Wi...Fi-nally or Not

Looks like fears of a terrorist plot carried out using a free city-wide WiFi network during the 2010 Games could lead the city to scuttle plans to launch the service that’s been in the planning stages for years.

In a recent Canwest news story, Vancouver Police detective Mark Fenton warns that city-wide mobile Internet access could allow hackers to tap into city services like hydro, traffic and transit during the Games.

“If you have an open wireless system across the city, as a bad guy I could sit on a bus with a laptop and do global crime. It would be virtually impossible to find me,” says Fenton.

The wireless plan that’s been on the books since the last election calls for much of the city’s infrastructure to share the same wireless platform. I’m no expert on the matter, but does this really make any sense? And why is it just striking the city now that this could be a problem?

It seems to me there’s an agenda at work here.

In the last election, the notion of making Vancouver a wireless oasis became a hot button issue. Vancouver needed to be on the cutting edge of wireless technology, politicians argued, like San Francisco, Philadelphia…and Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Vision Vancouver’s platform called for a wireless network in time for the Olympics.

The question of access was key. Would the service be offered by the city or would it be private? If public funds were spent on wireless, would all Vancouverites have unfettered access?

In the motion that was eventually approved for the WiFi system, city councillors agreed the system should be made available to everyone—with a particular emphasis placed on connecting non-profits and individuals who might not otherwise have ready access to the Internet.

Yet these days, activist groups, including the British Columbia Wireless Network Society, are concerned the city may be planning on building a piece of showcase technology that will be too expensive for regular users and may be dismantled after the Games.

The city has estimated it could cost up to $10 million to implement the WiFi system by the Olympics. How much of this will be public money? If the service is to be financed by the public, will everyone have access? Or will the city decide to go private after all of these promises, all the while distracting us with terror rhetoric?

Interestingly, over the last few months, the wireless issue has seemingly disappeared off city council’s radar only to reemerge this week under the guise of a perceived terrorist threat.

Groups like BCWN, the Vancouver Community Network and the Homeless Nation are keeping the issue on the agenda, on their own terms. All three groups promote and catalogue the growth of free hotspots around the city with an eye to community organizing. Homeless Nation in particular focuses on putting wireless technology in the hands of those for whom access is traditionally denied.

Check out Wigle and Wifimug (a site devoted to wireless coffee shops) for maps of free access hotspots around the city.

The Great Unveiling

Reading about the Olympic clock unveiling in The Globe and Mail and on the CBC sports page has led me to wonder if I attended the same event as the journalists who penned these stories.

Rick Mickleburgh's Globe story has all the good cheer of a press release-cum-video news release.

Unlike the CBC story which claims the protesters were disrupting the celebration, I was struck by how physically segregated the protesters were from the 'revelers', let's call them. The police did a tremendous job bracketing off any dissent from the crowd of suits and tourists and curiosity seekers out enjoying their lunch breaks with a heady dose of international sporting event boosterism.

As I walked around the perimeter of the gathering, I was amazed that even a sonic barrier seemed to have been erected. Standing with the suits, I could no longer hear the raging granny singing a medley of 60s protest songs in front of the Anti-Poverty Committee's own countdown clock which bore the sign "Vancouver's Countdown to Triple Homelessness."

I missed the incident in which the master of ceremonies, VANOC spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade, was pushed aside by a man with a bandanna over his face but I saw the aftermath. Just as I was arriving on the scene, I saw him being dragged over to a waiting paddy wagon. Two police officers on horseback managed to surround him and the other officer, creating a visual shield that even the wiliest photojournalist wouldn't have been able to pierce.

Unlike the author of the CBC story, I saw no egg-throwing nor evidence of paint-filled balloons nor rocks wrapped in papier mache. Alex Burnip with the Anti-Poverty Committee told me that several of his APC colleagues were arrested while trying to release balloons that read "Homes not Games." Seems innocent enough, no?

Many protesters raised concerns about the need for low-income housing in the city. Wendy Peterson, also of the APC, criticized city council's plan to spend $500,000 on emergency shelters during the Games, suggesting this was an attempt to hide homeless people. She responded really thoughtfully and intelligently to Mayor Sam Sullivan's Civil City Project, what she called "a law and order approach to homeless."

You can read about the Civil City Project here.

What I was really struck with during the unveiling of the clock was just how upset the protesters were and how swiftly and silently the police were carting them away into waiting paddy wagons. Let's fast-forward three years to the Games; is this how we'll be treating dissent and even, gentle disagreement?

And will journalists be on board with this?

That said, I like Chris Brown's CBC TV piece on the protest. It takes a more nuanced approach to conflict and the Games. You can also see me in it if you look closely. I'm the one on the sidewalk behind a woman being subdued by a police officer.

I should also mention that I took a lot of photos yesterday with my Pentax K1000. As soon as they're developed, I'll be posting them here.

No Time for the Olympics?

On Monday, February 12th, there will be exactly 1,095 days (three years) remaining until the 2010 Olympics. To mark the occasion, a Vancouver 2010 "countdown clock" will be publicly unveiled in front of the art gallery (Hornby and Georgia) at noon. This looks to be the event of the month.

There's a countdown clock press conference to be held at 11:15 at the Fairmont Hotel. Slated to speak are Stephen Urquhart, president of Omega Clocks ("the official Olympic clockmaker"), Peter Huerzeler of Swiss Timing and John Furlong, a Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) CEO. Apparently, they will be speaking about how thrilling this new clock is. According to a press release, the clock will be emblazoned with "Canadian and West Coast themes." Cringe.

Media accreditation is required to record and/or film the "event," and I've already missed the deadline. Although an hour-long propaganda-filled press conference about a clock doesn't sound like the most thrilling way to spend lunch hour, I'm going to go to this. Something interesting has to happen. The journalists forced to cover this have to amuse themselves somehow, right?

Also of note: A group calling themselves the Anti-Olympic Coalition have promised to protest the clock unveiling. The group is comprised of members of No One is Illegal, the Anti-Poverty Committee and the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association (DERA) among others. It's a little hard to read their poster in the photo above, but their main beefs (?) appear to be how the city is dealing with homelessness and poverty in the lead up to the Games, environmental destruction as a result of pre-Games construction and something about Squamish that is illegible as the poster wraps around a pole. This image comes courtesy of Sillygwailo and was found on a Vancouver Olympics Protest flickr page.

My curiosity is piqued. I want to see what else the Anti-Olympic Coalition is up to.

Oh, I should also mention that the Honourable David Emerson, the Honourable Gordon Campbell and Sam Sullivan will be speaking in reverent tones about the clock at the unveiling. A number of Olympic athletes will be traveling in tow, including skeleton Silver Medalist Jeff Pain. If I had to participate in an Olympic Games, I think I would choose skeleton as my sport of choice too.

2010 Aboriginal Business Summit

I am naturally inclined to feel a little wary when I hear of ‘partnerships’ between the First Nations and the B.C. provincial government.

However, I was just reading about the 2010 Aboriginal Business Summit that took place this week and it looks as if some genuine dialogue is happening between the four host First Nations, the provincial government and the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC).

According to Summit organizers:

“For the first time in Olympic history, Aboriginal participation will be a specific function of an Olympic and Paralympic Games. Whether it’s doing business with VANOC, becoming a supplier, networking, developing partnerships, or leveraging the potential of tourism, the Summit takes a practical hands-on and how-to approach that will be of interest and value to Aboriginal businesses across the country.”

The focus of the summit was on identifying and pursuing economic opportunities for the First Nations in advance of, throughout and after the 2010 Games.

To add a little context here: the government is required to work with the First Nations in planning and implementing the Olympics because the land on which the Games will take place is the subject of land claims by the Lil’wat and Squamish First Nations.

Aboriginal law, an expanding wing of Canadian law, requires Aboriginal groups be consulted by the provincial government regarding initiatives held on disputed lands (One such piece of disputed land is the Sea-to-Sky Highway corridor, pictured above. The image is courtesy of Charchen.)

The relationship the provincial government and the First Nations are to uphold, where the Olympics are concerned, is mapped out here under "Shared Legacy Agreement".

Much of the ink on his document deals with land use. In recent years, it seems the government has been expanding upon its commitments by agreeing to build a multi-million dollar Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations cultural centre and laying the groundwork for a Tourism Management diploma program at Capilano College.

But just when I started feeling that something good might come out of the Games, I read this in yesterday’s Province.

The link only works if you’re a Province subscriber. For all you non-subscribers, I’ve pasted the article for your viewing pleasure.

Grab the gold rings, First Nations urged
2010 Olympics: Seize opportunity of Games, premier tells native leaders
by Damian Inwood, Staff Reporter

There are no guarantees that First Nations will win business gold at the 2010 Olympics, says Premier Gordon Campbell.

“There are, clearly, economic opportunities—there are not economic guarantees,” Campbell said yesterday.

Campbell struck a cautionary note while addressing a lunchtime crowd at the 2010 Aboriginal Business Summit, attended by more than 550 delegates.

“Just as we say to our athletes, ‘Go and set your goals and take advantage of those opportunities and move forward,’ so we have to say to our businesses, ‘Set your goals, think of what you’re going to do, dedicate yourself to it, make a commitment and, hopefully—and I’ll underline that—hopefully you will succeed,” added Campbell.

He compared winning a 2010 business opportunity with performing as an Olympic athlete.

“For every athlete that stands and receives a gold medal there are thousands that tried to get there,” he stressed.

Campbell said the Olympics are a “springboard for First Nations.”

Lil’wat First Nations Chief Leonard Andrew said 2010 has meant jobs for at least 30 of the 200-strong workforce on the reserve.

“We’ve formed our own company in concrete and supplying all the barriers of the Sea-to-Sky Highway,” he said. “Unemployment is down. It really reflects in the community with the pride that goes along with people saying, ‘I’m going to be working on these projects.’”

He agreed with Campbell that there are no guarantees of a pot of gold at the end of the Olympic rainbow.

“We say to our communities, ‘There is no guarantee but if we train you and you’re willing, you’ll have that great opportunity,’” he said.

Tsleil-Waututh Chief Leah George-Wilson said that so far, her Burrard Inlet community doesn’t have a signed legacy agreement with either the Canadian or B.C. government.

“It’s something we’re working on,” she said. “We’re working on economic development opportunities and working with the Vancouver 2010 Olympic organizing committee.”

===

Could Campbell have come out sounding any more patronizing? And why is there still no legacy agreement between the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation and the provincial government?

The Death and Life of Vancouver?

While leafing through my much-loved copy of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) the other day, I wondered what the urban theorist and community organizer would think of the highway projects threatening to dissect Vancouver and destroy rare wetlands where she alive today.

I recently discovered that Jacobs, known for asking city planners and government officials if they were building cities for people or for cars, had a long and complex relationship with the city of Vancouver.

Jacobs first made a name for herself in the early 60s while living in New York. She took a stand against prominent developer Robert Moses who was preparing to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have cut through Greenwich Village and SoHo, in effect severing them from the rest of the city. Moses viewed these areas as slums but Jacobs saw great potential in the now thriving neighbourhoods. She preached neighbourhood revitilization and through public talks, community engagement and a little civil disobedience, managed to get the highway project shelved.

Shortly after her widely-publicized battle with Moses, Jacobs immigrated to Canada so that her sons could escape the draft. She settled in Toronto but Vancouver quickly became a city she loved and praised.

Jacobs was consulted when highways were being built in and around Vancouver in the 60s and she is, at least in part, responsible for the fact that Vancouver has thriving downtown neighbourhoods unbisected by highways.

It didn’t come as a great surprise to me to learn that Jacobs, prior to her death in 2006, had opposed many of the BC Liberals’ urban planning initiatives. She was vocally opposed to the Gateway program, designed to facilitate traffic flow in and out of Vancouver for the 2010 Games.

Jacobs also denounced the construction of the RAV rapid transit line and a four-lane highway to be blasted through the Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver in order to upgrade the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler.

In fact, this was the campaign in which Jacobs was most invested at the time of her death at the age of 89.

In what her son Ned called her “last civic act,” Jacobs issued a statement of support to the people of West Vancouver and in particular, the protestors determined to, in Jacobs’ words, “preserve and protect the magnificent and irreplaceable Eagleridge Bluffs and Larson Creek Wetlands from this destructive, ill-conceived scheme.”

Current Vancouver Director of Planning Larry Beasley has referred to Jacobs as "a spiritual guide." The city of Vancouver recently launched a Jane Jacobs Ideas Day. I have big hopes that Jacobs' ideas for livable cities will continue to act 'spiritually' upon local planners and developers and that this highway madness will be recognized for the killer concrete it really is.


You can find a repository of Jacobs' writing online, courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces and Preservenet. More information about Jacobs' life and ideas can be found here.

The Gateway No Way

I’m intrigued by the activities of a group calling themselves Gateway Sucks. They’ve been hitting the streets lately to talk to locals about the expansion of Highway 1, the congestion 'reducing' project masterminded by Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon (that’s his face on the button, image courtesy of Gateway Sucks).

With virtually no public consultation, Falcon and the Gateway Council (whose Honorary Chair is none other than Federal Minister of International Trade, David Emerson) pushed through the expansion project last spring, at a projected cost of $4.5 billion. The project will include the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the expansion of Highway One to eight lanes between Langley and East Vancouver.

Though many urban planners and environmental luminaries have spoken out against the project, Falcon calls it a done deal.

In a recent letter to Emerson, David Suzuki denounced the expansion as “an old-school, 1950s-style urban planning model plopped into 21st century Greater Vancouver.”

What kind of city can we look forward to during and after construction? To be sure, the new highways will carve up the city and suburbs into neat little “geography of nowhere” wastelands, take funding away from the regional transportation system and make Vancouver even more of a car-dependent city than it already is.

Whatever happened to the GVRD’s Liveable Region Strategic Plan? This plan, in development since 1986, has been designed to reduce traffic congestion and would be transit friendly. It would also be comparatively pocketbook friendly too, at an estimated cost of $300 to $500 million.

It seems the GVRD plan got 'falconed'.

What is Gateway Sucks doing about all of this? They’ve been going door-to-door to talk to locals, spreading an impressive petition, and distributing the aforementioned buttons—all with real direct action flair.

Oh, and they’re hosting an anti-Gateway dance party next week, too. After pounding the pavement, every good activist needs to shake a leg.

Greenest Games Ever?

In an editorial published yesterday in The Guardian, Tony Blair spoke proudly about the 2012 London Olympics, with only 2,012 days remaining in the countdown. He claims the UK Games will be "the greenest games ever."

Blair writes that "the 2012 games will be a catalyst for one of the most extensive urban and environmental regeneration programmes ever seen in the UK." He talks of "sustainable building methods" and "reducing the carbon footprint." His masterful use of all the right buzzwords is impressive.

But wait, haven't we heard all this before? The Sydney Games were touted as "the greenest games ever." Then Torino took up the label. Vancouver is next on the list.

Gordon Campbell has been quick to jump aboard the sustainability-speak bandwagon, proclaiming loudly that the Vancouver Games will best all previous Games that have claimed the eco title. Yet shortly after his statements, as many Vancouverites know all too well, Campbell was spearheading the initiative to blast through Eagle Ridge Bluffs to make way for a four-lane highway to Whistler. The Bluffs are arguably the most sensitive wetlands area in the lower Mainland.

Have a look at VANOC's (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) 6 sustainability principles. Do these seem entirely obvious to you?

(1) Ecological limits: Society must live within the earth's capacity to sustain life
(2) Interdependence: Economic and social prosperity are dependent upon the natural environment
(3) Long-term view: Today's decisions and action must not compromise the choices available to future generations
(4) Inclusiveness: Participation by all people must be promoted and decisions must be based on input from key stakeholders
(5) Equity: People must be empowered to live in a sustainable way and resources must be used fairly and efficiently to meet basic human needs worldwide
(6) Healthy communities: Community health and quality of life is integral to global sustainability.

Vancouver $20.10

While trolling for anti 2010 web sites, I came across a parody site called Vancouver $20.10 (or, better put, what used to be a site and is now simply an image). The image is of a $20 bill and a dime. Have a look:

http://official2010olympics.com

A little research lead me to discover the site was originally a parody of the official 2010 Games page. It was created shortly after the Olympics committee released the 2010 Olympic logo bearing an image of an inukshuk. The link to the page is currently down but I'll return later today to see if it can be resurrected.

In the meantime, here is the "official" statement from the now defunct page, courtesy of the folks at The News is Now Public (www.nowpublic.com):

Kuhldaa offers the welcome of a nation shaped by its rich, natural and cultural appropriation. Its colours reflect those of both Canada and the host region: the blue waters of our salmon farms, the green forests of our softwood lumber, the red maple leaf of our Canadian identity and the golden sunrises that paint the city skyline and the snow-capped peaks from Vancouver to Whistler. These bright, cheerful colours, along with the playful arrangement of the shapes that make up Kuhldaa, encourage us to overlook the deplorable living conditions, substance abuse issues and unemployment rates of many First Nations in beautiful British Columbia. This tendency to disregard issues occurring within our own country is something all Canadians look forward to sharing with our international visitors.

A clever confluence of design, politics and culture, don't you think?

Could B.C. Place Become the Next Big Owe?

Lately, Montreal’s stade olympique and Vancouver’s B.C. Place have been taking on an uncanny resemblance to one another.

On January 5th, a fierce storm punched a hole in the inflatable roof of B.C. Place. The repairs, which will involve patching over the massive tear in the fabric, have been estimated at $25 million.

The repair job brings to mind the repeated repairs to the roof of Montreal’s Big O stadium, or the Big Owe to which it is more commonly referred. The much-maligned stadium was constructed for the 1976 Summer Olympics Games and played host to the Montreal Expos until 2004, but now is used for little more than monster truck shows.

The Big O was originally forecast in 1970 to cost $120 million but the final tally for the building surpassed $1.47 billion. This bill was finally paid off by the city of Montreal on December 19, 2006, over 30 years after the construction of the monolithic finned monstrosity.

B.C. Place is a more beloved stadium than the Big O ever was (in part, this is because the Big O was largely paid for by a special tax levied on all tobacco sales after 1976…not a popular move in Quebec!). Yet, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games will thrust B.C. Place on to the world stage in a colossal way and projected repairs to the building in advance of the opening ceremonies could soar well into the millions, making the home of the B.C. Lions football team into another financial sinkhole of Olympic proportions.

CBC Story on the B.C. Place Dome Collapse:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/01/05/bc-dome.html?ref=rss

Photo of the B.C. Place Roof:
http://www.nowpublic.com/bc_place_roof_collapse_0