Like any self-respecting immigrant to Canada, I watched Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Wednesday night. It was my local team playing, after all. I’d even watched many of the play-off games.
When the Vancouver Canucks last lost in the Stanley Cup finals in 1994, there were riots in the city. I didn’t live here back then, and the riot wasn’t really part of the identity of the Vancouver I’ve gotten to know since I moved here in 2002. It did factor into the conversation as the city planned to host the Olympic Winter Games last year, but I’m glad they decided we could handle more massive public events.
This hockey season people from all over Metro Vancouver gathered on the streets downtown to watch the final round of the Stanley Cup play-offs on giant screens CBC Television set up, and the crowds were peaceful, even when we lost in Game 6.
Having spent time in downtown Vancouver during the Olympics last February, I wasn’t really concerned about how things would go with 100,000 people watching Game 7 on the streets on Wednesday night. I stayed home, but that’s not the point. In my mind, Vancouver had proven itself a city of friendly celebration, a place where after we won the Canada-USA gold-medal hockey game, red-clad Canadians patted the backs of the few blue-clad American fans on Granville Street and told them their team had played well.
As a New Yorker, my quiet, adopted city had finally – finally – fully come alive for me during the Olympics. People who usually keep to themselves talked to strangers at the bus stop. Our humble citizenry got seriously loud and proud. We got to know each other a little better and we shared a once-in-a-lifetime experience with generosity, open-mindedness, and good cheer.
Vancouver, though the third largest city in Canada, isn’t a very big city. It’s possible to walk across the non-residential part of downtown in less than half an hour, taking your sweet time. This part of the downtown is the commercial heart of our city. It’s where we eat dinner out, where we go to the theatre, where we grab sandwiches and make an impromptu picnic lunch. Tuesday night my partner and I bought a washing machine at the Sears you may have seen on the news – it was the one that was being looted after Game 7.
When I turned on the news Wednesday night and saw burning cars and beatings, I nearly cried. If the Olympics had permanently ensconced Vancouver in my heart as the best home I could possibly have made for myself, the rioting made me weep for the desecration of that home.
An hour after the game ended I barely remembered it had even happened. The events flickering before us on television weren’t about hockey at all. The people burning cars; those cheering them on; the ones smashing the windows of banks, department stores, a coffee shop; the hordes of spectators with their phone cams – these were not people lamenting the loss of the Stanley Cup.
So don’t believe the headlines that announce it was sore-loser Canucks fans who rioted. The faces of the looters and rioters weren’t creased in pain because their team had let them down. The streaming news footage didn’t capture chanting or shouting about the Canucks or the Bruins.
The rioters were smiling. They were throwing their arms up in triumph, fists pumping in the accomplishment of having made fire in a public space, of having stolen an armload of Pringles, of having literally kicked another person when they were down.
There are rumours that a small number of people planned ahead of time to riot, arriving downtown with incendiary devices and masks. Whether that’s true or not, we’re also told that the tenor of the rioting here in Vancouver wasn’t really any different from the tenor of riots other North American cities have experienced after sporting events – Vancouverites were no more violent than people from other places.
But I felt afraid that the post-Game-7 violence and destruction would tarnish my feelings about my chosen home. I was afraid the city that shined so bright for me during the Olympics, whose people were so kind and open, whose celebrations were so peaceful, had crashed down to a low that will define us more saliently. I’m not worried about how potential tourists feel and I’m not concerned about the international media. On Wednesday night I began to fear that we’ll be kept down by the simple knowledge that we can sink so low.
But then Thursday morning hundreds of people flocked downtown to help work crews finish cleaning up. The vast and ever-more-vocal majority of Vancouverites is as horrified and crestfallen by the riots as I am, and the mayor insists this isn’t the end of pubic gatherings downtown. It’ll take a while to mend my broken heart, but I’m already starting to feel soothed.
Know what else makes me feel a little better? That I think I’ll be a more enthusiastic Canucks fan next year. Hockey, that all-Canadian game, brought us – our city, our country – together before the rioting shocked us into fear and disgust. The riot wasn’t the team’s fault, and it wasn’t their fans that did the damage. I’m surprised that this is my reaction. It’s a big commitment and one I was never very interested in taking on before. I wonder if dedicated Canucks fans feel more devoted now, committed to reclaiming the dignity they themselves did nothing to tarnish. I don’t know, but I do know I’m enjoying this strange new feeling I have – that hockey is the answer, not the problem.
There’s light at the end of this tunnel in Vancouver. Our collective good-natured spirit is rising up out of the ashes. Maybe it’ll make us even better neighbours to each other over time, now that we’ve been so dramatically reminded of how important that is. I’m hopeful. I’m very, very hopeful.
[...] When I woke up Thursday morning, I found a Twitter message from Amy Swenson asking me if I’d like to write about it for a sports site run by women writers. It was exactly what I needed to do to work though my thoughts and feelings about it all. She put me in touch with the editors, and you can find my essay here. [...]
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