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Posts Tagged ‘VANOC’

The flame screams out "Let me free!" photo courtesy of Steven Johnson

Today is certainly a big day for Canada at these games as the Womens hockey team will go for gold later this afternoon. Womens curling semifinals have just finished, the men will play later today, three Canadian men will jump in the aerials final tonight and Joanie Rochette will skate in the final flight in the ladies individual figure skating competition. Three more days of competition remain after today that are sure to also contain many Olympic highlights. As we near the end of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, the retrospective analysis has begun.

In a piece in yesterdays Vancouver Sun, Jeff Lee notes the surprise of VANOC officials over the exuberant outpouring of national pride from Canadians and their enthusiastic support of the games. It’s nice that they’ve been pleasantly surprised, but it’s important to note that their surprise is at least partially a function of the huge amount of negative (often inaccurate or misleading) press coverage the games have received, both before and during their execution. As someone who is generally pro-Olympics and has put some effort into push back against false arguments from Olympic detractors, I may have spent more time than most listening to negative press. But if the organizing committee, by default the games biggest cheerleaders, were apprehensive that Canadians wouldn’t get behind winning gold medals at home and Olympic hockey, I think it’s fair to say that the negative stories had reached a saturation point.

Something else Lee noted that  illustrates this story very specifically is the handling of the Olympic Cauldron. Fearing all the press about protesters, VANOC felt the need to hide the cauldron behind a chainlink fence extremely far back from the Cauldron with a large phalanx of police officers milling about, both within the enclosed area (along with the lucky few who due to volunteering or knowing the right people are able to have an unobstructed view) and outside. VANOC CEO John Furlong said they were blown away by the desire of the people to see the flame. I say that’s baloney. The flame is an enduring symbol and being drawn to fire has to be one of the oldest human instincts around. I think VANOC had higher expectations of the numbers of protesters and demonstrations that would occur based on the media narrative and needlessly increased security based on that. The enormous outcry from the public about the cauldron forced VANOC to act, although their fix, installing a plexiglass section in the fence and constructing an elevated viewing platform is still wanting. Paul Sullivan writing in the Metro had a much better idea last week suggesting completely removing the fence, putting up a velvet rope and staffing as many serge clad mounties as needed to provide security directly around the flame. Let VANOC’s shortsightedness due to media distortions serve as a lesson to future hosts (I’m looking at you London.)

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Photo from Mr. Macias' Twitter Account

On Saturday, after undergoing several hours of questioning from Canadian customs officials, Martin Macias Jr., an activist with ties to the Olympic Resistance Network attempting to travel to Vancouver to cover and participate in various anti-Olympic protests and rallies, elected to return to the US instead of remaining in Canadian custody. The above linked to CTV news report does indicate that Macias was the given the choice to remain detained in Canada and await trial for withholding information. Being a working student, this was not an option for Macias and he returned to the States. The ORN reports that Macias has no criminal record that they are aware of.

While the decision to grant entry to the country ultimately lies with Canada Border Services, I am of the opinion that we should only be turning people away with just cause; as of right now there does not appear to be any in the case of Mr. Macias. Personally, I have a much different viewpoint of the Games than the members of the Olympic Resistance Network, but I completely defend their rights to participate in peaceful protest (although other tactics have been espoused by the group), as well as report on it. The city, VANOC and ISU have all been slow in the past when addressing free speech concerns. While this is a slightly different case, in that it involves a US citizen travelling across our border, it still falls into the same broad category, and Canada Border Services joins that group of organizations engaging in poor information management that only serves to make them look bad. With the ORN hosting a two day conference (or ‘convergence’ as they term it) set to begin on February 10th we can be certain that Mr. Macias will not be the only one with a negative Olympic voice attempting to enter the country. One certainly hopes that they will have better luck than Mr. Macias had should there be no overt reason to deny them entry. Border services have currently indicated that the specifics of Macias’s case cannot be discussed due to privacy concerns; with the agency indicating that “Canada’s admissibility requirements will not change for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic games” a better accounting of the reasons for denying entry to Macias are certainly in order.

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