Excerptcize

I am a newer resident of Vancouver, and was only 10 years old when the Vancouver Canucks lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in ’94 and rioting erupted throughout the streets. I don’t have any direct memories of that event, but it is easy to feel the remembrance of that shameful incident this city collectively has as we inch closer to the one of the most anticipated hockey games this country has ever seen; Canada’s mens hockey team wraps up Olympic round robin play this afternoon at 4:30PT/7:30ET when they face the United States of America. I feel that it is no accident this particular game was scheduled for a Sunday, as opposed to a Friday or Saturday; liquor stores close earlier and I presume officials are also hoping that many revelers will remember to go to work Monday morning and restrain their intake of celebratory libations (a futile hope in my mind).

The nervousness of Olympic officials was put on display before Sunday as a jittery Vancouver Police Department made a request to the BC Liquor Control and Licensing Branch to order the closing of liquor stores city wide at 7pm as opposed to the typical time of 11pm. The order affected both public and private stores, but did not extend to off rack sales at pubs and bars. This measure was apparently in response to the events of Friday night in downtown Vancouver. The particulars of those ‘events’ are another matter. I was downtown on Robson and Granville on Friday night. It was busy. There were plenty of people in the streets. Many of those folks were drunk. As far as I know from my own anecdotal gatherings, as well as what I can find in published news reports there was no inciting event that turned the large, festive and yes, intoxicated crowd disruptive or violent. They simply remained a large, festive and drunken crowd; and that’s it. I am sure that there would have been some individual isolated incidents of assaults of varying natures, but that is par for the course for a weekend night on Granville Street. More notable to me is what appears to be an extremely low level of unfortunate events given the massive influx of people celebrating in the city.

There is no doubt that the police have been lenient in terms of enforcing public intoxication laws. I think they are to be commended for this. It is a good thing for police to be able to exercise their powers with a certain amount of discretion. If the police are becoming concerned that they levels of public intoxication are approaching levels that are becoming dangerous then why would they not begin to enforce intoxication laws just a bit more than the stance they have previously taken? Did we not spend an obscene level of money on security for reasons just like this? For his part, convicted drunk driver Gordon Campbell told CTV News the early store closures were necessary, saying:

“There’s a huge number of people downtown and we have to make sure everything goes well for everyone [...] I think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

He is correct there’s a huge number of people downtown; exactly what he (and the rest of us Olympic supporters) wanted. If everything has not gone well for everyone please let us know. The maxim does not really apply. Closing the liquor store is throwing a pound of cure at a problem that has not yet formed. Police members applying existing laws just a little more (and interacting with the crowd instead of with one another) would be the ounce of prevention.

All of that said, tonight’s hockey game will be a big party in the street. I hope that Canadians remain cognizant that should we lose to the US we will still move on to the next round. I still prefer an outright win, but regardless of the turnout, let’s be safe and have fun.

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