Disgusted and angry is how many Vancouverites are feeling right now. Not about the hockey game, but rather the behavior of thousands of Metro Vancouverites in the riot that followed.
If you weren’t paying attention to the Stanley Cup playoffs yesterday and are wondering why all the windows of the Bay (as well as dozens of other stores in the downtown core) are now broken or boarded up with plywood, here’s what happened:
First, the Canucks suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of a grittier, harder-working team with an amazing goaltender. Boston is now the absolutely the greatest sports city in North America, with every pro-sports team winning a championship in the last five years. Mark Atkinson and I spent two weeks ribbing each other about the rivalry between the Bruins and Canucks and our two cities. We took shots at fans – I mentioned over and over the classless and prejudice behaviour of Boston fans more than a few times. I even suggested that it would be unruly Bostonians who rioted after they lost, not Vancouverites. But in the end, Boston – and their fans – won in every way last night.
Brock Anton – one of many assholes to stupid to understand his actions.
Vancouver, this riot wasn’t all of us – but it was many of us – and not enough people from our community did enough – or anything – to stop what happened and never needed to. Newscasters, our mayor and about 1.7 million people in the Twitterverse proclaimed deep into the night that “this was the work of a small number of people intent on starting trouble regardless of how the game ended.” Bullcrap. Thousands of drunken idiots hurled anything they could hurl, trashed buildings and got in fights. Many more stood as silent witnesses to the destruction, ignoring pleas from officials to vacate the downtown core. It’s always easier to act for an audience and thanks to the rioters’ traveling cheering section, there was always someone close-by to document their acts of vandalism and illegality and share it on Twitter and Facebook.
Post apocalyptic world or Downtown Vancouver after a Canucks game? You decide. – Photo courtesy of the National Post
Ultimately, the tens of thousands of other people from our community who hung out downtown well after the melee had begun, snapping pictures as if they were part of some adventure tourism experience, helped add a little more fuel to the fire. These people kept the mob mentality intact, gave looters and rioters places to hide from police, and – most importantly – occupied the Vancouver Police Department’s time.
Unbelievable. Disgusting. Embarrassing.
Second, there is the rest of the world. On behalf of this blog’s editorial team – one of whom was tear gassed last night – we apologize to you for this reprehensible behaviour and we ask you to please believe that this kind of thing is not an accurate reflection of our city or the people in it. But every community is not without its alcohol-influenced-misguided-troublemakers, and a few of these people made their mark last night. The thousands of people who will show up today and volunteer their time to clean up this mess, let these people speak for the culture and spirit of Vancouver.
Finally, a friend of mine from high school posted the following line on Facebook last night; it’s something that Canadians should take to heart: “Useless violence and destruction. No one in this country takes action for things that matter, yet will destroy a downtown when a hockey team loses.” I’m one of the most positive and hopeful people that you’ll ever meet, but even I’m searching my soul right now. So must Vancouver.
Incredibly well put, John Horn. I think what disturbed me the most was exactly what you decry in this piece – the number of people standing just outside of immediate danger with camera phones in hand, like the entire thing was a photo-op. I think huge props should go to those rare individuals who risked their personal safety to stand up to the douche-bags in the moment, as that kind of courage seems to be in short supply these days. And could have changed the tide of things to come last night.
Thanks for your as-always stellar editorializing.
Thanks John,
Lots of conversations on FB pointing fingers at the ‘burbs’. How easy to lay blame anywhere but within our own community.
Thanks very much, Stephanie and Tasher (and all the Likers our there), but Kurt Heinrich deserves a ton of credit, too. He made the words make sense and was the inspiration behind the whole thing coming together at midight today.
You folks also give me hope, too.
Check out the piece about the clean-up in the Vancouver Observer, too!
Your sentiment, so well expressed, is how so many of us continue to feel after more than 24 hours. The glass is beginning to be swept up and some are pitching into help the downtown recover, but I fear the the emotional scars will be easier to erase. So sad after a shiny 18 months of pride in our city, athletes and communities.
Thanks for this post, John.
PS. Gregor, you’re deluded and playing politics with this event was naive at best, despicable at worse. Booooooooo….
Total agree. These guys should be strung up. Waht do youy ned from Tdot?
– Pete
Thank, Pete (I think).
I believe that we’re all good, but we do appreciate you speaking on behalf of Toronto!
Stay classy.
– JCH
Pretty harsh, John. Obviously, actively obstructing any emergency services is a douchy thing to do, but just standing around taking pictures seems pretty reasonable, or at least entirely excusable. Clearly many of those taking pictures were doing so with the goal of holding the perpetrators accountable, which is a good thing. Also, I think it’s safe to say that, for the vast majority of the people downtown, this was a crisis situation well beyond anything they had ever experienced. In such situations, I’ll cut people some slack for not doing the absolute most sensible thing. Lighting stuff on fire, breaking stuff, stealing stuff, beating people up… inexcusable. Trying to document a pretty unreal situation and/or not being sure what to do… I can understand that.
Thanks Julian. Of the 100,000+ people who were part of the riot, I think that the majority fell into the categories that you describe above.
Though, full disclosure, you did protest my birthday party, so I think we know where your allegiances lie, my friend.
Also, what you describe is a double-lose situation, methinks. First, there’s the fact that the photo-happy bystanders/tourists provided an audience for the rioters – do you really think that their documentation of events was purposeful, or was using the photos and videos as evidence an afterthought for people? In most cases, I think it was the latter. And the bystanding crowd provided strength in numbers for the organizers as well as the hooligans, who the VPD have now officially shifted the blame on to – the police had to wait to divide and conquer way longer than they should’ve. I’ll give you that no buses were running out of town, which made it harder for people to leave, but that’s about it.
Second, I know that my reaction was a harsh and visceral one. I’ve talked a lot about how I hope that, had 20-year-old-John been in Downtown Vancouver last Wednesday, he would’ve done the right thing and gotten the heck outta there. Perhaps this is one reason that I got so darn emotional about the whole thing.
To be honest, I don’t know entirely how to feel about the second mob that’s emerged out of this melee, either. The online community that is harrassing rioters’ parents, embracing vigilanty justice, and Big Brothering their community makes me feel conflicted; I want punishments to be harsh for the people that wrecked Vancouver and sullied our reputation and made the Canucks feel even worse for losing, but I know it’s a slippery slope and that accepting photos from bystanders/tourists today to make convictions for rioting could lead to photos and videos being sent to police or bosses to have people arrested, fined or fired for violating bylaws or behaving outlandishly at a sporting event.
So, no matter what way you back up your bystanders, Julian, it just doesn’t feel right. Savvy? I mean, they either provided the roaming audience that egged on the twentysomethings who lit things on fire and/or they are now part of the group that have verbally and physically harrassed the parents who turned in their kid because of the photos of him that they posted on Facebook. It’s kinda lose-lose, my man. And, like I said at the end of my post, none of this is really giving me too much hope when it comes to the future of our community. Aside from the noble clean-up crew, where are you getting your happy feelings from?
And the only caviat I’ll put to this is that Kurt wrote some of the things that you mentioned directly (usually when we collaborate there’s an “Editor’s Note” at the beginning), so I recommend following up with him, too.
Thanks again for being our third biggest fan after Brenton FC and Pete.
I admit that most of the people snapping pictures were probably not primarily motivated by the thought of bringing people to justice through appropriate channels, and there was probably a strong element of adventure tourism. However, if you find yourself in something “big”, I think it’s reasonable to try to witness it/ document it. I’m not saying people consciously thought through the pros and cons and decided that it was in society’s best interests to hang around, but I think that desire to witness stuff is generally a good thing. For example, without the documentation from the crowds, how would we know that the Mayor and Chief of Police were wrong to blame it on Anarchists(tm)? While my impression is that the police did not use unnecessary force, etc., what if they had? I want people taking pictures of that.
A 20-year old Julian wouldn’t have been downtown that night, unless he had gotten lost on his way home from tree-hugging practice, and even if he had, he wouldn’t own a camera, but if he did somehow find himself downtown, with a camera, I have no doubt that he would have hung around taking pictures (and making sure he did not get in the way of emergency services). He wouldn’t be able to explain why, but it would just seem like something he should do.
Maybe 20-year old Julian would have added to the audience for the yahoos, but I’m not sure whether the difference between an audience of 50 vs. 5000 would have had a substantial influence on the behaviour of the yahoos.
The Court of Facebook Vigilante Justice thing is another complex issue that I don’t know much about, but while I’m sure that some people have crossed the line, I don’t think you can paint huge parts of the crowd with that brush.
You want happy feelings about the riot? How’s this: there is always a balance between maintaining law and order, etc., and maintaining civil liberties. For example, the riot could have been prevented by imposing a curfew before the game. Or, once it started, it could have been ended more quickly by strong police/army action. Neither of these things would have been very cool. Instead, the powers that be erred on the side of liberty, and accepted the obvious risk of rioting (admittedly, there are things they could have done to contain rioting while not interfering with civil liberties). During the riot, I suspect that the police were thinking more about skin and bone and less about cars and glass, which is why the rioting was allowed to continue as long as it did. That makes me feel pretty good about living here.