The Sochi Winter Olympics, which start today, has been considered one of the most controversial games to date, if not the most. There are a multitude of reasons for this: from massive over-spending (the original budget was set at an already costly $12 billion, and is now at a staggering $51 billion), to the environmental impact the massive reconstruction of the resort town has caused (one reporter claimed she was warned not to splash water from the tap onto her face as it “contained something dangerous”).

But while these problems are certainly concerning, they aren’t out of the ordinary for the Olympics, which every year seem to get more and more outrageous. Russia’s anti-gay stance, however, casts a long shadow over the whole event, for much of the world—including Webb, and those who joined the protest.

“I listened to the things Putin was saying, and was horrified. This law, which is just Putin’s own belief, not Russia’s, is nothing but discrimination and I felt I had to do something or I couldn’t enjoy the games.”

The law, which passed last June, states that it is illegal to demonstrate “non-traditional relationships” in front of minors. That means you can be thrown in jail for holding hands with someone of the same sex in front of someone under 18. While not directly connected to the Olympics, this law is pretty much contradictory to the event’s spirit. After all, the Olympic charter states: “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”

Putin has told media that gay athletes and tourists would not be in any danger from the law, but added “but please, leave the kids alone”. Many countries, such as the U.S. and Canada, are putting pressure on Russia to can the law, and have openly spoken out against it. There is no sign, however, that Putin will make any changes.

Back in Queen’s Park, more and more runners keep showing up despite the weather (I’m somewhat certain I’ve lost a few toes to the cold). They join in with the flowing, glowing pink train, and take up the chant “Put the Poof in Putin”. All across the country similar protests are happening; people are making the statement that what is happening in Russia isn’t right. Even Google changed its doodle to a rainbow design of Winter Olympic sports.

“We want to show the world that we will not stand for such discrimination,” Webb tells me, “that Canada accepts all athletes, regardless of their sexuality. We want to do it in a peaceful, creative manner, and we want to send that message to Russia, with love.”

Consider this: the population growth of racialized or non-white groups continues to outpace that of white Canadians. This has created a shift in the demographic balance of the Canadian mosaic, with our population on its way to becoming a “minority majority.”

According to Statistics Canada, by 2031, over 70 percent of Canadians living in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver will be from a visible minority or racialized group. Already, almost half the population in the Greater Toronto Area is a visible minority. Yet we are not seeing an equivalent shift in the halls of power: in business and in government, visible minorities—particularly African-Canadians—still represent a small fraction of the decision-makers relative to their overall population.

In April, a report by the Law Society of Upper Canada looked at the legal profession relative to others and made the following observations: “In Ontario in 2006, members of a visible minority accounted for 30.7 percent of all physicians, 31.7 percent of engineers, 17.6 percent of academics and 11.8 percent of high-level managers, compared to 11.5 percent of lawyers.”

A recently released study, entitled “DiverseCity Counts: A Snapshot of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area,” showed that while some sectors are doing better at reflecting the general makeup of the population, visible minorities are underrepresented in leadership positions. Today, visible minorities comprise 49.5 percent of the population, but only 14 percent of senior-level leaders.

The implications of this imbalance will only become more significant as the population continues to shift. Canada must demonstrate the potential of harnessing the best of all of our peoples. Diversity in the leadership of our institutions matters. Far from being a form of tokenism, a significant increase in the number and diversity of visible minorities at all levels of leadership is essential to Canada’s competitiveness.

In May, Governor General Michaëlle Jean addressed business, academic, and socialsector leaders in a speech to the Canadian Club. She told the audience that “saying yes to diversity is saying yes to modernity, to opportunity, and to the very future of our country.” There is an economic case for embracing diversity: to create a “brain gain” by recruiting, hiring, mentoring, developing, and retaining a qualified and diverse workforce. Imagine the dividends for Canada’s global competitiveness when all its citizens have an equal opportunity to lead, to innovate, and to contribute to our social, economic, cultural, and political landscape.

The DiverseCity study also found that visible minorities are underrepresented in the media, accounting for only 19 percent of appearances by broadcasters, reporters, print columnists, subject experts, and commentators. Diversity in media leadership and representation of visible minorities is improving incrementally, but larger gains are needed. Why do we not see or hear from more visible minorities in daily coverage? How long must we wait for media outlets to do the research and start assigning these stories?

One initiative to improve the coverage of racialized minorities is DiverseCity Voices, a new electronic database of experts who are also visible minorities. Journalists can turn to the website to find underrepresented leaders who are able to provide commentary and opinion on current affairs.

Since joining the website, I have appeared in a variety of local and national print and radio, television, broadcast, and social media outlets, providing my opinions on subjects ranging from the Olympic Games, the G20 summit, and Africentric Schools. I’ve received more calls from journalists looking for comment, and that’s important to me. Young people become what they see, and role models of all backgrounds need to be seen and heard.

Sociologist John Porter’s Vertical Mosaic, published in 1965, remains the touchstone for a deeper understanding of the structure of Canadian society. Porter’s findings portrayed Canada as a hierarchical racial pecking order, with attendant consequences for social mobility, access to power, and economic success. In the Canadian mosaic, whites were (and still are) the dominant culture at the top of the heap. Fifty years on, Porter’s study still rings depressingly true. But there is reason to be optimistic.

With a conscious effort to create and sustain diversity in all our institutions, it is possible that Canada’s vertical mosaic will be replaced by one that is inclusive, linear, and beneficial to us all—no matter where we come from or the colour of our skin.

Eric Deis's large-scale photographic installation of Last Chance. Image courtesy the artist.

Even after all its Olympic-related world-class-city posturing, Vancouver remains very much at odds with itself. At once a bedroom community, a wannabe metropolis, and the centre of a long-running real-estate boom, the city is like a teenager who keeps changing her clothes, says visual artist Eric Deis. “Kids grow up, they push boundaries, they try different things. I think that’s what’s happening with this city,” he says.

We’re leafing through a collection of Deis’s photographs at his studio in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, a few blocks from his home. It’s a Friday morning in May, and the first signs of summer have cast a new optimism over the city like they always do at this time of year, as if challenging more restless residents to tough it out and stay. But if the 30-year-old Deis has his way, this could be his last year in Vancouver. Like any serious artist, he wants to go where the opportunity lies. Despite years of photographic work documenting the city, plus a large-scale public installation and a well-received gallery show this year, it’s just not here.

“I’ve explored all my opportunities in Vancouver, and I’ve kind of maxed out,” Deis explains. “Vancouver’s cost of living is so high, but I don’t think the return of what you’re getting out of living in the city is on par. Sure, it has mountains, you can go skiing, you can take your yacht for a spin. But as far as cultural stuff, it kind of pales in comparison to other places.”

Deis’s complaints are common. Provincial government cuts to arts funding in the last year have left British Columbia’s arts and culture sectors reeling, and an unstable real-estate market creates increasingly prohibitive conditions for young people to live affordably in the city. Deis’s work—mostly large-format photography of architecture and urban spaces—depicts Vancouver in the midst of this transition. His focus on construction sites, homes on the cusp of demolition, and tensions surrounding gentrification and real estate development also capture the conditions that compel people like him to leave town. His images often take on the character of dioramas in their forfeiture of single-subject focus for wide-ranging narrative studies of streetscapes and inbetween spaces.

In Last Chance, Deis captures a new condominium development on Richards Street. The street sits on the boundary of Yaletown, an upscale downtown neighbourhood that has grown rapidly over the last 15 years into a forest of high-rise condo properties. A small green bungalow stands beside the banners advertising the condominiums. The house, affectionately known by locals as “the little green house,” was eventually demolished in the condo construction process. Last Chance was installed as a large-format photograph on the wall of Vancouver’s CBC building in April, where it stayed for five months. Deis’s other works, such as the luminous Hipsters and Drug Dealer, inhabit similar moods of loss and transformation. Seen together, Deis’s photographs comprise an intriguing series that deftly captures urban history in a seemingly ageless and perpetually adolescent city.

Eric Deis. Photographed by Tomas Svab.

Deis is no stranger to transition himself. Born on a military base on B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands, he was raised in Red Deer, Alberta, attended art school in Vancouver, completed an MFA in San Diego, and returned to Vancouver in 2004. He’s not sure where he’ll move next, but like many emerging artists his age, survival as an artist in Vancouver isn’t likely. “They haven’t built an office tower [in Vancouver] in the last 20 years, because it’s three times more profitable to build a condo tower. That changes the dynamic of the city,” he says. “Vancouver, instead of becoming an economic or business hub, becomes a sleepy suburb.” Downtown’s suburban turn is rooted in condo marketing to baby boomers in search of a second mortgage, Deis says, not a first home.

Deis’s sharp eye and idiosyncratic photography—at once self-aware and critical of its surroundings—presents a brilliant reflection of a changing city at the end of a decade. Too bad he’s so eager to leave.

Today in Verbatim, This contributing editor Andrew Wallace interviews Dave Zirin, sports editor of U.S. progressive weekly The Nation and host of Edgeofsports.com, a blog and radio show that examines the collision of politics and sports. He’s the author of several canonical books on that topic, most recently of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, and before that wrote What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States and Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports.

As always, this is a transcription of the biweekly This Magazine podcast, “Listen to This.” You can hear the whole audio interview here, but we’d also encourage you to easily subscribe to the podcast through iTunes so you never miss an episode.

Q&A

Andrew Wallace: You were in Vancouver prior to the Olympics and I read your piece in Sports Illustrated. I was wondering if you could elaborate on the sense of discontentment that you experienced there before the Games.

Dave Zirin: I was there just a couple weeks before the start of the Games and what I found, walking around the streets and just talking to people is that it seemed to finally settle in on people just how much the Games were going to cost, how much of an inconvenience it was going to be, and just how shut out of the party a lot of them were going to be.

I spoke to one person who was so excited, and had been saving for a long time to go to one of the hockey games, just to find out that he wasn’t even close to what it would actually cost to get a ticket to go. That sense, you could see it just weighing on people in a really serious way. Also, this is a media term, the optics were just terrible. When I was there it was announced that funding for physical education programs were being cut, letters were going out to 800 teachers because of budget overruns. To have that on the front page of the local newspaper while the top flap was all about Olympics, Olympics, Olympics, happy, happy, joy, joy, it definitely bred a feeling of discontent.

Andrew Wallace: But do you think now, we’ve had the Games for the last two weeks and the hype machine got in motion and with the spectacle and excitement of it do you think that all of that will be forgotten?

Dave Zirin: Well it’s interesting; I think a lot of it was forgotten during the Games because there’s a rush. You’ve got so many people there and it’s such a big party, but if history is any guide, now is when you’re really going to get the second shoe dropping because the bill is going to come due. The amount of money, all the accounting is going to be on the table.

When Vancouver first got the games, one local politician said publicly that according to his figures and his estimates it would be a $10 billion influx of funds into the city. PriceWaterhouseCooper, the independent accounting firm, said right before the games started it would probably be more like less than a billion. That’s a huge drop off, now what are the final figures going to be? Once the dust is cleared and all the accounting tricks and obfuscation has been cleared off the table. That’s usually when you see politicians losing their chops, so we’ll see what happens.

Andrew Wallace: Right, one guy, Christopher Shaw with No2010, he said that he thought it would be the equivalent of the Montreal, maybe not equivalent in scope, but of the Montreal Olympics which everyone calls “the Big O” because I think with all the interest, they were still paying back over $100 billion in debt to the city.

Dave Zirin: Yeah that’s right, in Montreal, the lead up to the Games was similar. I mean it’s so interesting, you go back and you look at previous games and it’s always the same promises and it’s almost always the same results too. Before the Montreal Olympics a local politician said that Olympics cause deficits about as often as men have babies and yet, the Montreal Games of course, it didn’t get paid off until 2006. It took 30 years to pay off the debt. Will Vancouver be that bad? It’s hard to say, but one of the things is that the Olympics, and the financing of the Olympics, is always held hostage to the larger economic forces in society and in the world and I think that’s one of the things that really hurt in Vancouver is that this was the first “post-global recession” games and we’ll see what kind of effect that has in the long run.

Andrew Wallace: What do you think the implications could be for future Olympic events then, because I think what’s really interesting is what happened in Chicago recently, that their was such a backlash to that bid, right? So are we seeing a change in the tide there of how people feel about the Olympics?

Dave Zirin: Yeah, I mean I also think one of the things you’re going to see is the Olympics rely heavily on the BRIC countries and their satellites. By BRIC countries you know: Brazil, China, India (and Russia), and I think that their going to rely on countries where dissent can be smashed with as little publicity as possible and where a lot of these projects can be pushed through with as much hypocrisy as possible. I think that’s going to be the unfortunate future of the Olympic games unless we really do have international solidarity movements for people who want to keep the Olympics out and I think that’s going to be the only thing that leads to what I think is the only sensible solution for the Olympics which is to have a permanent winter and summer site and to eliminate the bid process all together.

Andrew Wallace: That’s interesting, what problems would that solve?

Dave Zirin: Well it would end the bidding process and that’s where you have the root of the IOC’s power and the root of a lot of corruption and lies that surround the Olympics.

See, the best way to understand it is that the IOC is like McDonalds headquarters and what they demand of every city is that they be a franchisee. That means if you’re a city and you decide say, democratically, through your city council that you’re going to have strings attached to the Olympic bid, that you’re going to have civil society at the table, that’s a favourite phrase, but at the end of the day though, if the IOC says “well, actually no,” then that’s just the way it is.

I spoke to a lot of people in Vancouver, very well meaning progressives who were pro-Olympics when they first heard about it, precisely because they got a ton of promises from local politicians about this seat that the table. But it was a mythical seat at the table and they became fierce Olympics opponents precisely because they were shut out of how a lot of the infrastructure spending would happen. And I think that’s the reality of the Olympics and if you had a permanent site it would just eliminate this kabuki theatre all together. Being on the International Olympic Committee would be little more than a ceremonial post, which is what it should be instead of what it is now, which is a position of a frightening power almost like a free-floating state with absolutely no oversight.

Andrew Wallace: And with charitable status right?

Dave Zirin: Yeah exactly, a non-profit that makes billions, I don’t even know how that works.

Andrew Wallace: So what do you think that means for say something like Rio? I mean, how does the progressive movement get in there and start speaking to the issues that could happen in Rio, because you know the things that are exacerbated by the Olympics are things like police corruption, political corruption and those are endemic problems in Rio right?

Dave Zirin: Yeah, huge issues in Rio with police brutality, huge issues of gentrification particularly the clearing of the favelas. I mean there’s already been a very dramatic gun battle where a police helicopter raided one of the favelas and someone in one of the favelas got a lucky shot off and the helicopter hit the ground—huge fire, explosion, right outside of Rio itself. I think the Rio example is going to be really interesting because, on the one hand you have a Brazil of that is ground zero to the World Social Forum movements in Porto Alegre, you’ve got the worker’s party in Brazil, that’s sort of on the one hand. But on the other hand, you also have the World Cup coming to Brazil just two years before the Olympics. They’re going to be able to push through a lot of the infrastructure, spending and policing that they need to do for the World Cup and that’s going to be interesting because it’s one thing to oppose the Olympics in Brazil. It’s another thing to oppose the World Cup. That might be a much tougher political needle to thread.

Andrew Wallace: That all being said, if we look at the Olympics that just happened, do you want to point out what you think your three most significant stories within the Olympics that went beyond the X’s and O’s of the field were?

Dave Zirin: Yeah, one, first and foremost, is the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian luge slider, which really resulted from the fact that he and the other luge sliders had no access to be able to practice at Whistler because of Canada’s Own the Podium campaign. And the fact that the people who were in charge of the International Luge Federation, the FIL, they created this track up there in Whistler that, for a year, people have been warning about, that it’s too fast and it’s too dangerous, it’s too much like trying to turn luge into the X-games, some wacky spectacle of lightening speed.

So people were talking about it for a year, and the predictable happened, somebody died. And the Olympics just go on as if it didn’t happen, including NBC news, issuing a dictate to NBC sports to stop showing footage of Nodar’s death. They didn’t want it ruining the party. But it symbolizes so much of what’s wrong with the Olympics. The Olympics speak about standing for these ideals of ethics and sportsmanship, but in reality it’s “go for the gold all the way and go for network profits all the way,” and it’s an absolute farce. So that’s a big one is Nodar Kumaritashivili.

But there are other stories that complemented the Olympics as well. Not all of them are bad stories by any stretch. The other ones I would say though are like the protest movement that occurred, the fact that for all the debates and discussions about the protest movement, organized largely through the Olympic Resistance Network, I mean it was something that was an Olympic protest movement that was open, and out and on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, so they got a remarkable about of publicity and I think really put a marker in the ground for future cities.

So those are stories that I’m going to remember that took place off the field of play. Beyond that too, I’ll just throw another one out there, It was really quite shocking the amount of homophobia by broadcasters against U.S. skater Johnny Weir and how accepted it was. I mean, like broadcasters saying over the air that he should be gender tested, all kinds of things like that. That he was ruining figure skating. It’s just unbelievable; he wasn’t macho enough for figure skating? Are you kidding me? It’s just ridiculous; to have that amount of homophobia in figure skating just really set my eyes back.

Andrew Wallace: Were you impressed with how Weir came back? I thought his comments in the interviews after the original homophobic comments were made were quite interesting and quite strong.

Dave Zirin: Weir’s never been shy, that’s for sure. He’s never been shy, but I still regret he didn’t make it to the top five. He came in sixth, because Lady Gaga was going to come and perform, and be there in person, so that would have been a lot of fun. So we were denied that.

But I think it’s still an important story because of these issues. Particularly the issue of gender testing in Olympic sports, its something I’ve written a lot about in the last year with South African runner Caster Semenya being a part of that story and it’s something that the International Olympic Committee–you can tell they’re trying to shift away from it in a number of ways, but as of this interview we’re doing right now, I mean they still have a Neanderthal view of gender testing. Although they’re moving it away from having it in their rules that the idea of being a “man” is this inherent advantage in sport, which is at least somewhat of a step forward. They still operate on a very strict gender binary and haven’t quite figured out what to do with people who don’t fit into their little compartments.

One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird.

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization that launched the campaign as some 350,000 visitors descended on Vancouver in February to soak up the so-called first socially sustainable Olympics.

The Red Tent campaign was pitched in response to the predicted shortage of shelter beds in the city during the Games and the failure of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its government partners to deliver on promises related to housing and civil liberties. The distinctive tents bear the statement, “Housing is a Right. This tent is protected by Section 7 of the Charter”—the right to life, liberty and security of person. They will be popping up in urban centres across the country as Pivot expands its action, which was inspired by a landmark constitutional case: last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right of homeless people to set up temporary shelters on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The campaign will continue until, Pivot says, the ultimate Olympic legacy is realized: A funded national housing strategy. Canada is the only G8 country without one. In April 2009, NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) stepped up to the podium with a private member’s bill to push for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians, but the Conservatives didn’t support the initiative. There were Olympic dreams that Vancouver would set a golden example of how to tackle homelessness, but when the road to the Games got bumpy, promises were torched. Let’s look at what happened.

During the bid stage in 2002, a coalition of environmental and social activists and academics formed the Games-neutral Impact on Community Coalition with “the purpose of maximizing the opportunities presented by the Games and mitigating the potentially negative impacts on Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods.” The IOCC successfully pushed for a referendum on the Games, and together with the bid committee and its government partners, developed the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement (PDF), a set of promises that was incorporated into Vancouver’s bid book and was considered binding.

The statement addresses 14 areas—including civil liberties and public safety, housing, and input into decision-making—and makes 37 specific promises. It’s been touted as an unprecedented pledge by a mega-event host city to work with low-income communities and promote social sustainability, but it materialized into little more than public relations puffery.

While the city boasted about hiring binners to collect bottles and cans left around town (meeting a commitment under employment and training) and VANOC proudly made 100,000 event tickets available for $25 each (ticking off the box next to affordable Games events), housing and civil liberties promises were glossed over.

After a quarter of Vancouverites cited homelessness as their greatest concern in a 2006 poll, ignoring the housing crisis was a Quatchi-sized gaffe. Worst of all, it broke the promise that no one would be made homeless as a result of the Olympics.

According to the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Vancouver increased by 135 percent from 670 in 2002 to 1,576 in 2008. The tally is believed to greatly underestimate the reality, given the difficultly in tracking down and interviewing the homeless, and housing advocates estimated there were between 4,000 and 6,000 homeless during the Olympics. (There were an estimated 5,500 athletes and officials.)

There was a promise that no one would be involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the Games. But according to the IOCC, approximately 1,300 low-income single room occupancies (SROs)—many contained in old hotels on East Hastings and considered the last option before homelessness—have been lost since the bid was won and the city is not following its own policy to replace rooms at a one-to-one rate. The city defends its record, making another promise that from 2003 to the end of 2012 it will have nearly 2,000 additional non-market units built, compared to a loss of over 1,400 units. However, these numbers don’t take into consideration rent increases that have made SROs unaffordable for low-income residents, nor does it account for rooms held vacant by landlords. Further, the city counts provincially owned rooms as new social housing, when they are newly social, but not new accommodations.

Before the Games, condos were outpacing social housing in the Downtown Eastside at a rate of three to one, and SRO residents were being booted out of their homes as landlords renovated so they could raise rents and make room for Olympic visitors. The IOCC went so far as to file a human rights complaint with the United Nations in July 2009 (PDF), saying hundreds of renters could be evicted prior to the Olympics because of loopholes in tenancy legislations, which allows for these “renovictions.”

An early version of the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment to provide affordable housing proposed by the city of Vancouver included a three-tier housing model at the Olympic Village: market price, moderate income and core-need. However, when a new city council was elected in 2005, one of its first moves was to play Monopoly with the model and commit only 25 percent of the units to “affordable housing,” and of those 252 units, between 30 and 50 percent for core-need individuals. In February 2009, the city reported that the cost of affordable housing at the village had risen from $65 million in 2006 to $110 million. And as of print time, housing advocates feared the plan would be axed completely (the city said a final decision was yet to be made).

Since they failed on the housing front, in a desperate attempt to clean up the streets before the Games, the B.C. Liberals pushed through the controversial Assistance to Shelter Act in November. Dubbed the “Olympic Kidnapping Act,” the law gives police the power to haul homeless people off the streets, pile them into paddy wagons and deposit them at shelters when there’s an extreme weather alert, which can occur in Vancouver when the temperature hovers around zero and there’s heavy rainfall (read: winter in the city). After activists rallied against the act—housing experts came forward to denounce it and Pivot said it was prepared to challenge its constitutionality in court—the chief of the Vancouver police said his officers will only use “minimal, non-forceful touching” to persuade people to accept a lift to a shelter, and will back off if they are met with resistance.

Another Inner-City Inclusive commitment was to commit to a “timely public consultation that is accessible to inner-city neighbourhoods before any security legislation or regulations are finalized,” but the community only became aware of the draconian act when a document leaked, and hasn’t been involved in any meaningful consultations.

In a last desperate attempt to quell negative media attention, BC Housing and the city teamed up to intercept international journalists at the edge of the Downtown Eastside, before they could get to the gritty stretch. They set up an information centre, Downtown Eastside Connect, at the shiny new Woodward’s site, where they shared their “successes” in tackling homelessness, including the building of social housing on 14 city-owned sites. There’s no mention of the fact that construction of these sites was delayed and not one was ready in time for the Games. The cost of the propaganda kiosk: $150,000.

Inevitably, foreign journalists found their way to the Downtown Eastside and wondered how the world’s first “socially sustainable” Games could look like this: Human wreckage, open drug use, prostitution, crumbling buildings. And a legacy of red tents instead of homes.

How could all of these promises be broken? There was no budget to implement the recommendations, including no funding for an independent watchdog; there was no enforcement mechanism and a lack of accountability; many of the goals were not measurable and the statements were wishywashy and open for interpretation. But perhaps that was the point: Get Vancouverites behind the bid with promises of social sustainability, and then hope we forget about it when the circus comes to town.

Hockey players at McGill University, Montreal, 1901.

I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, home to the most diverse region in all of Canada, perhaps the world, in a Hong Kong immigrant household (caveat: my Man U-loving dad raised me on soccer). I’m intensely proud of that fact. So it ruffles my feathers that, hockey so often precludes all other events — a men’s hockey semi-final quarter-final win over Russia (at that big sporting event that shall not be named) garnered more media and spectator attention on a day in which four medals were won in non-hockey events.

Hockey, Wikipedia tells me, is the national winter sport of Canada and has a well-known history that predates European arrival. But in modern-day Canada, the idea that the sport represents us all seems anachronistic.

I tweeted as much yesterday, saying “Heres the thing about hockey: its a rich cdn’s sport. It irks me to no end one of the least accessible games somehow represents my nat’l ID. … That, and up until recently, it was (and arguably still is) a boy’s game. It just doesn’t represent us all.” The debate that ensued seemed to strike a nerve, which you can read in its entirety here and here.

The Canada-Russia game averaged 10.3 million viewers—a third of Canada’s population. I don’t doubt the popularity of hockey, but it’s the modern incarnation of the sport that irks me.

As I tweeted earlier, it doesn’t take much to figure out that hockey runs hundreds, maybe even thousands, beyond what more “democratic” sports cost: high-performing soccer cleats run about $200, plus another $100 for jersey, shorts, socks, shin guards. Basketball: $40 ball, $150 shoes. Hockey: high-end skates can run $600 — never mind the cost of pads, sticks, helmets, pants, jerseys, neck guards and everything else.

My boyfriend, a lifelong hockey fanatic and a player in his adolescence, took umbrage with my assessment. He says in his small town in New Brunswick, almost every kid, boy or girl, played the game. If they couldn’t afford it, coaches supplied hand-me-downs, freebies or communal team gear.

True, you can still enjoy a game of outdoor shinny on hand-me-down skates and sticks. And the game itself is still a rush to watch. But we don’t live in a Tim Hortons commercial — even a rec league requires all that equipment, and from it, the hockey industry — from the $300 Leafs tickets to Bauer and Nike — generates billions of dollars from it.

For a disadvantaged Toronto kid, charity, waived fees and mentoring seems to be the only way into the game these days, the Toronto Star found, quoting NHL goaltender Kevin Weekes: “The pricing is such that our sport is becoming an elitist sport.”

Playing at a rep level and up requires several thousand in registration fees, cost for travel, and that’s not even counting the gear. All totalled? $10,000 a kid. As the Star pointed out, this leads to kids—talented ones—dropping out because of the financial burden.

Any sport that requires such a money sink is self-stratifying. It’s a terrible social phenomenon happening not just in amateur sports, but also in skyrocketing university tuition, extra fees required even in public school, laptops and other technological gadgets that are now virtually mandatory in academic and professional spheres. It also means at the highest level, the NHL, as in many other places in life, those that succeed are the ones that can afford it. It’s disheartening that all these opportunities are moving further and further out of reach of low-earning Canadians families.

In recent years, more leagues, presumably aware of this problem, have started offering bursaries to players—but I’m sure the effects are analogous to university bursaries vs. tuition freezes and reductions.

@bmo, a gentleman I was talking with on Twitter, mentioned how sports such as football institutionalize the outfitting of players—high schools supply all the equipment. An online search turned up nothing on socioeconomic statistics of incoming players in any major leagues, but I’d be interested to see if there’s any correlation between how sports are funded and who ends up succeeding. For a country whose diversity will only increase, not to mention an NHL looking for a wider audience, this isn’t a passing concern.

The costs associated with modern youth activity isn’t just hockey, obviously. It’s just as wrong that serious coin must be spent for extracurriculars such as soccer, basketball, dance, gymnastics, horseriding, ballet, skiing or swimming.

The difference is, no one’s calling these the national sports of Canada. When it’s put on a cultural pedestal, it demands a fairness and accessibility that befits the morals of the country it represents. I think most Canadians believe we are a fair, free and equal country. Hockey, if it ever did represent that, doesn’t anymore.

The spirit of a nation comes from its people, emblematic of their shared experience, ethnicity, history or culture. Our spirit is that we lack all these, and instead take polite pride in them all. We are not one dish, one national dress, one language, one music (I would defect if Anne Murray or Celine Dion were our national chanteuses). How, then, can Canada reduce its sport to just one?

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games open tonight with much fanfare, pomp, jollity, glee, grandeur, ceremony, flourish, and setting things on fire. We’ve spent, oh, about the last six weeks moaning about the whole thing, from the overblown budget to the bogus environmental claims, the sponsor bloat to the unsettled aboriginal land claims, the out-of-control homelessness in Vancouver to the erosion of civil liberties, blah, blah, blah. Hearing ourselves complain about it is almost as irritating as hearing people (and there are plenty of them out there, apparently) saying how wonderful it’s all going to be. Our friends and families—and maybe you, too—are sick of hearing our complaints, and the whole mess is going to go ahead anyway, no matter what we do or say.

So: Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re just going to shut up about the whole thing for the next two weeks. Live and let live. The news is going to be absolutely chock-a-block full of Olympic blather, and while we probably can’t tune it out, we can opt not to be part of the problem. Therefore, This Magazine’s website will be, starting today, a totally Olympics-free zone, continuing through February 28. We’re not going to talk about it, not going to complain about it, not even going to acknowledge the Games’ existence. We’ve said what we have to say. Drop by and say Hello if you need a little refuge from the media carpet-bombing you’re in for everywhere else. See you on the other side!

Jacques Rogge's bank of Olympic televisions (artist's impression).

When Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, checks into his Vancouver hotel suite a few weeks from now, he will find (as he flops, exhausted, no doubt, from the strain of private jet travel) a “video wall,” paid for by the citizens of British Columbia. The bank of televisions are a requirement of IOC regulations, which state that the president must have enough screens to be able to watch every Olympic event underway at any given time—simultaneously.

The white-glove treatment being extended to Count Rogge of Belgium and the 111 other IOC members—the clutch of industrialists, backwater bureaucrats, tinpot generals, and dissipated royalty who preside over the Olympic “movement”—puts the economic reality of 2010 into sharp and sickening perspective.

Somehow in this country it became perversely more politically viable to spend $1.98 billion widening B.C.’s Sea to Sky Highway for a two-week international event than it is to implement a national housing strategy to aid Canada’s estimated 300,000 homeless (Canada is the only G8 country without such a plan). Today, more than 600,000 Canadian children live in poverty, a number that hasn’t budged since 1989’s doomed Campaign 2000 parliamentary pledge to eradicate child poverty by the turn of the millennium—yet $900 million will be spent on security costs, battle-hardening Vancouver against the Olympic crowds. The opening ceremonies of Vancouver 2010 are budgeted at $58 million, while the B.C. provincial government cut $20 million in arts funding just last summer.

It’s not possible to draw a direct line from the ledger that pays for renovating the Vancouver Convention Centre ($883 million) to the one that dictates that Canada pays among the lowest unemployment insurance rates in the industrialized world. But in a national sense, it is sad to contemplate the collective priorities expressed by these decisions: to choose the splashy over the prosaic; the grand, short-lived gesture over the incremental improvement; the rich and famous over the poor and marginalized. Or to furnish a Belgian count’s plush hotel room with more televisions than one man can watch, while thousands sleep in the street.

Google Earth detail showing part of the Athabasca tar sands mining operation. The tar sands is both the most carbon- and capital-intensive project on earth. Photo via Flickr user Skytruth.

Nothing brings out patriotic pride like the Olympics. But before we get busy reading about gold medals and new heights of athletic glory, let’s take a few moments to reflect on a few shameful Canadian records that you likely won’t be hearing about during any Olympic broadcasts:

1. The Alberta tar sands hold two shameful world records: Highest carbon footprint for a commercial oil project and largest capital project, says a September Greenpeace report. The organization commissioned award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk to write the paper, in which he declares that the tar sands are likely to hold onto these records as production continues to expand over the next decade.

2. In 1989, the federal government promised to end Canadian child poverty by 2000. The kids that promise was made to are adults now, and one child in seven still lives in poverty. The Conference Board of Canada’s annual benchmark exercise scored us 13 out of 17 countries on child poverty; only Italy, Germany, Ireland, and the United States ranked below us.

3. Canada is the only G8 country without a national mental health strategy. Stephen Harper announced the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2007, but so far the commission only posted a draft framework for what the strategy will look like on its website. With one in five Canadians dealing with a mental illness at least once in their lives, we hope the Commission stays on target to finish the plan by 2011.

4. We’re also the only G8 country without a national housing strategy. Though Bill C-304, an act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible, and affordable housing, passed its second reading last September, Libby Davies, the NDP member who proposed the bill, says that there is still much work to do to make it a reality. For example, educating our governing party on the importance of such a strategy: With one exception, Conservative MPs voted against the bill.