“Like Detroit and other cities, Vancouver will learn from this, too. There was rioting in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the Cup in 1994 and the city can’t make the same mistake again. I can all but guarantee that if the Canucks make the Cup final next year, Vancouver will brace for a riot, warn about a riot … and won’t riot.”
Maybe - but seeing as they had 17 years to look at what went wrong in '94 and prepare to avoid a repeat, and wound up with more of the same (or worse) in 2011 - why would you expect it’ll be much better the next time around?
Its like global warming…just far enough into the future to be not worth worrying about…and by the time you get to where you are from where you started you’ve forgotten what your supposed to worry about.
The postal union has been on a series of rotating strikes through various cities for a while; only recently has the union expanded the strike nationwide. What is at issue concerns postal workers’ pensions–nothing related to Vancouver, hockey, or last night’s riots.
Then get upset at the minority of your country men who are behave like violent idiots and so tarnish your reputation, not at the people who can’t help noticing them.
Canada’s hockey fan base is, in effect, Canada. The U.S. has no sport of equivalent importance. According to some estimates, more than eightly percent of all Canadians - not an 80 share, I mean 80% of all men, women and children residing in the entire country - watched the 2010 Olympic gold medal game. We can’t all be vandals or else the whole country would have burned long ago.
As evidenced by the Toronto G8 summit, you apparently don’t need a hockey game to get a Canadian city in some trouble. What you need is a big crowd and any excuse to be pissed off. As well as, perhaps, some law enforcement ineptitude.
If the Nucks had played the goalie from Marblehead and Boston College instead of the one from Montreal, then they might have overcome the jinx they put on themselves by trying to sell broadcast rights to the victory parade.
This whole thing is astounding. I’ve only lived here for a year, and Vancouver has impressed me in so many ways, including the community spirit over hockey. The media this morning has been full of coverage of ordinary Vancouverites descending on downtown with brooms, dustpans, and garbage bags to clean up the mess and express our collective shame. I assume that’s getting the same international attention the riots did?
Thought not. Quietly clearing up a mess is less of a story.
You could feel the tension in the air in the last few days of the series. Someone spray-painted something like “Win or Lose: Let’s have a Riot!” on the side of a building on Granville.
A lot of the trouble-makers were the local anarchists and anarcho-punks. Probably more so than the actual sports fans. They had (and probably still have) the bad combination of a chip on their shoulder against “the system”, and a sense of entitlement in regards to looting from “big businesses”.
I was a punk back then too, but not a particularly political one, so the night of the last game I stayed home in the room I was renting and watched it all go down on TV. I figured if I went out to see the spectacle in person the police would most definitely take me for a rioter because of the way I dressed.
Some normal (as in not “punk”) friends of mine were out, but way up in the West End on Davie St. Once the riot started the police broke out the tear gas, but the prevailing winds blew it all up the West End. My friends and the crowd of people they were in had to take refuge in one of the chain coffee shops from these tear-gas clouds. The staff was nice enough to let them all in, then lock all the doors as a safety precaution.
One of the more memorable incidents of my wayward youth!
Regarding the guy who was pushed off a bridge, it turns out that he jumped.
The Georgia Viaduct is an elevated street running alongside Rogers Arena. Fans can exit the upper levels of the arena directly onto the viaduct. Georgia Street, just a block or so away from the arena along the viaduct, was one of the main ‘party’ areas this Stanley Cup Playoffs, so a lot of fans exiting the arena will head straight out onto the viaduct to access the street and the other areas further up (Granville Street, etc).
This man was either trying to jump from the arena stairs to the viaduct or jump from the viaduct to the arena stairs. It’s not a terribly big gap, and looks completely reasonable. Well, when you’re drunk. Fact is that missing that jump drops you four stories to the street below. In a big crowd, slightly intoxicated, heading out to party and a little saddened over the loss, he missed the jump. He apparently hit the awnings over the stairs on the way down and hit the pavement. He’s currently listed in critical condition at VGH.
I dunno what I’m trying to say, except that he wasn’t a Boston Bruins fan flung off a bridge by a crowd of bloodthirsty sore losers. So many bad things happened in this city last night and we have an awful lot to be embarrassed about. I just don’t feel the need to add anything else to the pile.
