Vancouver Olympiad
It’s a strange thing to watch the Olympics when it’s hosted in your own city, especially when you witness the bulk of it on television. I’ve lived here for nearly five years now, in neighbourhoods right downtown, in Fairview, Kitsilano and now the furthest reaches of East Vancouver, bordering the suburb of Burnaby. I daresay I know more about Vancouver than many of the people who were born and grew up here; I barely know the history of the place I grew up in, but I’ve found as I’ve gotten older, knowing about where I live has become very important to me. I wanted to situate myself here as quickly as possible, get myself up to speed, even if I had never shown any interest in Vancouver prior to moving here. Somehow, Vancouver tantalized me and captured my interest in the end.
When I first arrived here, all I knew was the downtown and the various streets and paths that connected by workplace in the financial district to my home on the other end of the peninsula. I only knew the downtown core, and any foray over a bridge required planning and forethought. But I walked a lot, eventually over those bridges, and started to explore further and further afield. I discovered a lot more character than what I found in what I found to be a pretty vacuous downtown core. I discovered the neighbourhoods of Vancouver’s West Side and East Vancouver — Fairview, Shaughnessy, Mount Pleasant, Commercial Drive — attractive enclaves that I don’t think many Olympic tourists even got to. I started to see the bigger picture of Vancouver, not the tightly focused and heavily edited version that got broadcast on CTV and NBC. The Olympic organizers seemed to have spent their time highlighting the least interesting areas of downtown, and even classic tourist destinations like Gastown and Granville Island found it hard to attract the interest of visitors due to this narrowed focus.
Perhaps visitors to Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics felt similar emotions. They came here, not knowing very much about the city and primarily for the draw of the sports extravaganza, and then discovered what was on offer here. Maybe over the duration of the Games, they managed to get beyond the Olympic Zones to explore more hidden corners of the city?
On a busy Sunday during the Olympics, my wife and I got out to see the big crowds on the street, taking the Skytrain down to Stadium station and then walking to the epicenter of the action at Granville and Robson. I knew many of these streets well, having lived and worked in the area for several years, and yet I found it gave off an artificial impression of my city, one where interest was generated simply because of the unusually large crowds of people (by local standards). We visited the newly-built plaza where the Olympic flame burned, surrounded by hordes of people trying to get pictures and at least a portion of the excitement seemed to come from being surrounded by these hordes — the flame felt almost like a sideshow. Just a block or two west, there was barely anyone around, and the streets were as barren as they usually are on a typical February Sunday. It was really odd to contrast that with the reporting and media coverage that seemed to indicate that the biggest party around was happening in town, but I guess it’s no surprise: that’s what publicity is all about. For all the talk of excitement and crowds though, the atmosphere seemed to pale in comparison to the endless crowds of cities like Hong Kong or New York, where points of interest aren’t contrived and indicated by signposts but derive organically from the city’s own personality and people; the artifice of Vancouver was clear to me in those moments.
Living out here in an East Vancouver neighbourhood called Killarney, with its ugly, pushed-together architecture of Vancouver Specials and decrepit 60s-era bungalows, and then turning out the television to watch the gleaming depictions of various locales around Vancouver I knew very well, I felt disconnected from the whole experience. Was this really the Vancouver I know? I walk around the neighbourhood, now that the flame has been doused and the guests have gone home, and still see signs of Olympic boosterism: Canadian flags hanging from poles, Olympic slogans temporarily painted on window glass. I often wondered how the people who live here felt, so close and yet so far from the corporate sponsorship and the custom-built sets of the broadcast centre; how was it that they managed to feel such a part of the experience? Was the city they were seeing represented on the screen the one that they knew and lived in? Or was it some iconic representation that was being committed to tape and hard drive? Even the depictions of the protests and the homelessness and drug culture of the Downtown Eastside seemed like a token, a quick nod to objectivity. The rest of Vancouver, from Point Grey to Collingwood, seemed to get short shrift.
I suppose I shouldn’t have expected differently. Tourism and hospitality is often about putting on a shiny face for travellers. The constant smile, the conveniently located point of interest. It’s why I’ve never loved travel as much as when I’ve been able to put down roots — whether it’s to live for a week in Mexico in a little apartment, cooking my own meals, or spending months in Beijing exploring my neighbourhood — and why when I moved here, to Vancouver, I was so eager to delve into the history of such a young city. It’s too bad that for most who came, they barely got a glimpse of it.
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