Along with the ongoing sovereignty debates with huge provinces in their country, Canada and China share another commonality: the two states are the next to hold the Olympic Games.
“The eyes of the world are on Canada,” says David Emerson, the federal minister responsible for international trade and the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, as the country prepares for the world’s largest winter sports competition in 2010. The Olympics, those gatherings of the swiftest, highest and strongest athletes in the world, however, can lead to both boons and burdens for host cities.
The 1994 winter games in Lillehammer, Norway brought the tiny mountain village thousands of tourists, athletic infrastructure to properly prepare for future Olympics, and a stirring proclamation from then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch calling that installment the best winter Olympics ever.
The 1984 summer games in Los Angeles were the most profitable at the time, bringing in more than $200 million to the city and the IOC.
In 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich summer games, marring what was billed by organizers as the rebirth of the city that gave rise to the Nazis.
Few people in this country can forget the disastrous 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
Canada failed to clinch a single gold medal, the games suffered a boycott from African countries, Montreal fell further into debt, and what was to be the Games’ crowning achievement, the retractable roof of the Olympic Stadium, could move no better than rush hour on the city’s Autoroute 15.
The Beijing Games set for this summer already have run into what could be the lasting impression of what was to be China’s debut as a modern, prosperous country. The Beijing committee has gone to exorbitant lengths to scrub the notoriously polluted city clean, including building a machine to produce clouds should the city need rain and teaching its millions of residents how to properly stand in line.
All of these efforts for Beijing’s coming out could be for nothing if the nasty situation in mountainous Tibet isn’t resolved before the Games’ opening ceremonies on Aug. 8. The Tibetan capital, Lhasa, has been set alight with protests and fires as Buddhist monks and Tibetan nationalists clashed with Chinese police over the region’s sovereignty. Although the initial March 10 protests were supposed to mark the 50th anniversary of the last Tibetan uprising, the Summer Olympics were caught in the fray when a protestor interrupted a speech of the Beijing organising committee chief at the flame-lighting ceremony in Athens.
Now the Games and the Tibetan riots, which may have claimed more than 100 lives already, will be inexorably linked.
A host of NGOs and protest groups have called on countries to boycott the games until Tibet is freed. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom organization, released a send-up of the Olympic rings, replacing the iconic hoops with handcuffs. While no country has announced it would boycott the Games, the possibility of a number of heads of state, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, not attending the opening and closing ceremonies looms large.
Vancouver and Whistler are the lucky hosts who are to succeed the Beijing endeavour. Ostensibly, the 2010 Winter Olympics could be one of Canada’s finest athletic moments. The Own the Podium – 2010 campaign, which has infused athletes and their coaches in this country with money, has already helped to produce world champions in figure skating, downhill skiing and speed skating in an attempt to prepare for the Vancouver Games. Canada could very well be the top winter sporting nation in the world at that point, confirming the country’s image as a pioneer of the north.
But arenas of the Lower Mainland and the runs of Whistler will have their own mini-Tibets with which to contend. Poverty and aboriginal protests have already been lodged against the games as these simmering issues, both on the West Coast and across the country, yearn to be resolved.
For Vancouver, that symbol of prosperity and plurality on the Pacific, these conflicts are nothing new.
Anyone who has walked down East Hastings is well aware that poverty is more than just an eyesore in an otherwise beautiful city – the country’s poorest postal code is a drain on the city’s budget, a hot spot for drugs and prostitution, and a threat to the lives of hundreds.
Earlier in March, at the First Nations Summit in B.C., plans were drawn up to protest the 2010 Games.
Given the headaches caused by the National Day of Action in 2007, during which the 401 and railways across Ontario were blocked by native protestors, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell’s recent slew of treaty settlements with First Nations around Vancouver are a promising step towards helping the Games run as smoothly as possible.
Millions of viewers, potential tourists and investors, from around the world should be impetus enough to address all that ails Vancouver, for the Olympics can be either the best tourist brochure in the world or a multi-billion-dollar reality check.
Improving the standard of living for Vancouver’s most vulnerable residents can not happen overnight.
But ignoring it altogether will only serve to haunt the city’s – and the country’s – international image.