“Downer …afterwards”?? To me it feels like an occupying army of lunatic strangers has finally withdrawn. I feel so much more relaxed and less angry/tense now that the event I’ve been dreading ever since voting “no” to Larry Campbell’s farcical referendum is finally behind us. Although I remain worried sick that the accelerated trend toward frenzied development that took hold in the wake of Expo 86 (when we were last “put on the map”) will only redouble thanks to an influx of “foreign” investors, and that in the process the last remaining shards of affordable housing in this city will be systematically sought out and destroyed by those who will always put profits above people. Yes, I’m one of those sorry bastards who doesn’t own his own home, and I feel very, very vulnerable these days.

Apart from that niggling little detail, I just thank all the deities there are that the Red Nightmare is finally over. To those who would condemn this statement for its lack of “patriotism”, may I refer you to http://mindprod.com/politics/patriotism.html for some choice thoughts on the topic, most of which I find myself with in enthusiastic concord? (The first quote on the list seems eerily apropos.)
gmgw

I asked my doctor for a prescription for some meth amphetamines to compensate for the low I’m feeling.

Goddam medicare won’t pay for it. Apparently “post Olympic depression” isn’t considered an actual affliction. Stupid government.

I hope they cover me when Gordon Campbell leaves office, ’cause THAT’s going to be a letdown of even more epic proportions.

I voted in favour of the games. I expected a great party, and my expectations were far surpassed.

I am also suffering from a serious case of post-olympic depression.

I sypathize with gmdw as I was feeling depressed during the games and have become a lot more up beat since its end. I got to live in vancouver for the last 20 years of my life, experience the lead-up to the games (i.e. giddy-nervous anticipation plus, construction, cost overruns, arts cuts, robson square construction eye sore, loss of social housing little mountain, a list of all the sweet free musical guests and the sponsors take over the city), but during the games I watched as an outside from Quebec, where the gold medal mens hockey game drew out approx. maybe 5 canadian flags along st. Laurent by prince arthur and maybe half dozen honks.
Would have loved to have been there. Can you stop talking about how fun it was?

Now im interested to see what happens with athletes village!

No way should the whiners be given this kind of credit. They lost this one and I’m hopeful that the legacy of the games will see them lose even more in future if they keep up the way they have.

The ones responsible for the success of the games are partly VANOC but largely the Silent Majority.

The Silent Majority are the people who don’t comment on blogs, attend public meetings, go to protests, or write letters to the editor. They voted for the Olympics in Larry’s plebiscite, they voted for the NDP, then voted Campbell in and then back in twice, they voted the NPA out, and they voted for the Federal Conservatives.

We forget that the Silent Majority are the people who are the audience for our messages we transmit in protests, letters, and blog posts. They became sick of hearing doomsday rhetoric like the “Olympic Corporate Circus”, “$7 Billion+ dollars for a two week party”, “Gordon Scampbell and his band of Thieves” and all of the other hyperbole spewed out by the whiners.
The Silent Majority is also sick of the whiners calling them “stupid sheep controlled by corporate interests” and “boosters”. The Silent Majority weren’t most afraid that we would fail at hosting the Olympics, they were most afraid the whiner messaging would take over.

Vancouver was a known as a no fun city because our leaders listened to the whiners. The Olympics came to Vancouver because a positive vision overwhelmed the whiners. The Olympics were successful because the Silent Majority took to the streets and had a good time (as did a number of the whiners). The Silent Majority saw what happens when they say “yeah, we can do that” and not listen to those who tell them “no we can’t, you fools”.

The Silent Majority was not surprised when windows were smashed and the protestor messaging fractured to the point of ridiculous when Anti-Olympics “Action” started. Also not surprising to the Silent Majority were the calls of a “police black bloc conspiracy” by the same people who hosted these saboteurs in their midst.

To get their message across, the whiner crew now have to think of a better way….mainly because we’re calling them “whiners” in this and other forums. As FB points out, the messages are valid, but the delivery of this message is abysmal.

Hopefully one of the most enduring legacies of the Olympics is that the whiners can temper their message to be more constructive and not insult and alienate the Silent Majority that they need on their side to make good things happen.

Maybe all of us can start being positive about what we have here in Vancouver, rather than searching for something wrong and exaggerating our faults to the point of hyperbole and rhetoric.

P.S. it’s “Gordo Scampbell and his Merry band of Thieves”

Frances and her readers: you may find this interesting….A blog post from Brent Dowdall of the Conference Board:

“How the People Saved the Vancouver Olympics”

http://sso.conferenceboard.ca/Economics/hot_eco_topics/default/10-03-04/How_The_People_Saved_The_Vancouver_Olympics.aspx

And Paul…you are right on. The protesters lost the interest of the “silent majority” a while back. For me (not that I’m silent) it was about a year ago when they did not apologise for small children being injured by their protest signs when they tried to hijack a family-oriented Olympic celebration event. Instead, they blamed the parents and all but threatened more of this behavior.

That’s not respecting democracy, it’s being a thug. Too many of the protesters proved they were more interested in being thugs than in promoting a cause or sharing information and a message.

JoJones,

May I repeat:

“Maybe all of us can start being positive about what we have here in Vancouver, rather than searching for something wrong and exaggerating our faults to the point of hyperbole and rhetoric.”

Hugs!
Paul.

We obviously have a “failure to communicate” here ;-).

However, Higgins, since you want to use the pop cultural references coined by liberal-dressed in conservative-clothing social satirist/comedian Stephen Colbert, let me point out something he mockingly said the other night about the DTES (yes, irony about the DTES! The blasphemy…).

“One block—that shows (Vancouver) as a failed socialist state!”.

In other words, it’s kind of relative, Higgins. As someone with ties to medical people from here working in an African village where more babies are born dead than alive, I would say that while life here is not the Utopian existence you wish it were, it is rather several rungs up the rest of the ladder from a larger part of the globe.

I leave you to your impossible, neurotic search for perfection and dreams of smashing the system.

And Joe Jones, the rest of us ‘silent majority’ types, who you so obviously disdain because we don’t fall under the rubric of ‘anarchists’ will just continue on in our plodding way to find ways over, around and through the system.

If we do a search and replace on “silent majority” for “quiet, busy and just-trying-to-earn-a-living -and-raise-their-kids Vancouverites” it may help some people see the message here.

You can see and count this “quiet busy” group– you cannot write them off as part of some mythical abstraction from a political propaganda machine.

We had democracy in action in two ways: a referendum back in 2004 and then people voting with their feet in 2010 and choosing to have a good time, ignoring the vocal minority.

Actually, democracy in a third way: the winners respected the losers’ right to whine and protest (until peacefulness started to disappear).

@gmgw : You’ve got to be kidding, right? “…completely ignorant…”? “…ignorant fools”? Dark freakin’ era????
Don’t tell me. gmgw is an anagram of George McGovern. Am I right?

We could sub “Silent Majority” for “occupying army of lunatic strangers” or “Red Nightmare”….right, gmgw?

Or how about “other people who also rent their homes”?

All of that would work.
So many possibilities!
Hundreds of thousands in fact.
They were all in the streets but with no masks to cover their smiling faces.

Happily, I will always cherish the memory of Sunday, February 28th, 2010, and celebrating that day with my son on the streets of Vancouver. It was a beautiful thing. One for the ages.

But I think you all need to take a break from your smug hullabaloo and bow down humbly and give credit where credit is really due:

Say a prayer of thanks to the Hockey Gods for their divine benevolence!

Vancouver could have just as easily been torn to shreds by a mob of angry testosterone-fuelled drunk guys that would have made the anarchists look like a bunch of old ladies in red mittens.

One goal separated the joyous celebration we witnessed from pure anarchy, from the Games ending in an unmitigated disaster with millions around the world tuned in. We all would have watched in horror as the largest domestic military deployment in Canadian history kicked in to quell the riot.

One slapshot. It was that bloody close.

And imagine how loudly you all would be complaining about it now…

So show some respect people.

Get down on your knees and offer your humblest thanks to the Hockey Gods!

“gmgw,

Your hauteur, as per usual, is riveting….”

I’m a little fuzzy today, HW. Are you saying that this is a *good* thing?
gmgw

GJG somewhat apocalyptically postulated:

“Vancouver could have just as easily been torn to shreds by a mob of angry testosterone-fuelled drunk guys that would have made the anarchists look like a bunch of old ladies in red mittens…”

Given that it became clear, toward the Games’ end, that our national self-repect is so utterly fragile, that this country is so pathologically insecure, that something as banal as losing a hockey game would apparently be capable of potentially wreaking serious and even permanent damage upon our collective national psyche, perhaps leading to civil unrest or even outbreaks of mass suicide (“…the shame! The burning, unbearable shame! We… were… (choke) SECOND!! Beaten at our national game… by the cursed, unworthy Americans!! Oh, God in heaven… this cannot be forborne! Atonement must be sought! Expiation! Expiaaationnnn!!”), I, hearkening back to 1994, somewhat anticipated the possibility of said riot myself, GJG, with rather mixed feelings (sometimes feelings just gotta be vented. Unhealthy to bottle ’em up. Clears the air).

But let me ask you this: In the aftermath, as the the smoking rubble that was once Robson Street was combed for red-clad survivors, do you suppose the perpetrators would have been denounced by officialdom and in the media and in on-line discussion groups as “anarchists” or “terrorists”? Or just a bunch of patriotic good ol’ Canadian boys who got a bit carried away? Makes me wonder.
gmgw

Prior to the games, I neither really was for them or against them. I did like the canada line that was built, but did not buy any tickets, buy anything from the Bay or plan anything for the olympics.

Starting with the sunny middle stretch something palpable changed in the city, and my attitude changed with it. On a fluke, I bought standby tickets at the tourist office at face value to ice dancing long-program (total, marvelous fluke), and went to some cultural olympiad events. i do think the olympics were a transformative event for the city in an overall positive way.

and on a related note, I was at work on saturday when I heard about the window smashing on georgia street. and as a long-time vancouverite, i felt a very strong and palpable anger against the instigators. IMO this event will set them back further that they expect…

@ spartikus @ Derrick O’Keefe: “I think indigenous sovereignty and rights issues are critical, and a lot of great work has been done in exposing this reality to the international media, for instance. ”

I found it surprising and uplifting to see the prominence First Nations received in the opening and closing ceremonies. Now let’s move on to complete resolving outstanding issues around land claims and justice.

Yes Spartikus, I agree with that assessment. And Paul, that was kinda the point of my comment:

– Most people I know (and perhaps they represent the silent majority?) were/are ambivalent about the Games. We looked forward to the party, the spectacle, the atmosphere, and will cherish the memories, but most were/are also disgusted with VANOC and our political masters’ mortgaging our future on Big Brother-style control, the blatant hypocrisy represented by the Inner City Inclusive Agreement and Greenest Games Ever label, and the shameless corporate shilling. No matter how much fun I had, these complaints were and are still legitimate and should not be overlooked. “Bread and circuses” alone cannot sustain us.

– The riot scenario was only to suggest that the Games succeeded purely by luck and chance (or divine intervention) and had pretty much nothing to do with VANOC and the Preem, which seemed hell bent on embarrassing the hell out of us with their constant snafus and making us look like bush leaguers. BTW, the #1 threat identified by the Security forces was never terrorism, it was street riots, and the size of the force was based on the ratio needed to contain a large riot a la 1994…

– And, as gmgw picked up on, I was invoking the 1994 riots. Thankfully, we got a Game Six-like celebration at the end of the Olympics, but it could have easily been a Game Seven nightmare. I would venture to add that the No Fun history of Vancouver was a direct result of the backlash to the Stanley Cup riot. Prior to that, Vancouver in fact was a bloody hell of a lot of fun, so much so that we were labeled “Sin City North” by the American press in the early 90s!

Lastly, I share a similar ambivalence toward your initial comment, Paul, because you ended it with:

“Maybe all of us can start being positive about what we have here in Vancouver, rather than searching for something wrong and exaggerating our faults to the point of hyperbole and rhetoric.”

Hear, hear!

Although I’m sure many would label me a complainer who often resorts to rhetoric and hyperbole, most of my comments on this blog are founded on that very same belief of yours. I know this is off topic, but, for example, it frustrates me to no end that our politicians and Planning Department willfully ignore the immense potential and highly marketable capital that lies latent in the Historic Area, and see fit to justify destroying our history and heritage by trotting out the constant clichés, hyperbole and rhetoric that most people/press use to negatively define the DTES.

Just saying…