More juxtaposin’:

1) Soccer Football:

…
Spain’s victory over the Netherlands on Sunday afternoon attracted an average audience of 5.131 million to the CBC, with a peak of 7.664 million, according to BBM overnight measurements.

Radio-Canada television drew 685,000 in French for a combined 5.816 million watchers…

2) Hockey Ice Hockey:

…
In Canada, Game 6 averaged 4.077 million, the highest audience ever for a U.S.-U.S. match-up on CBC for the Stanley Cup final [not sure if that number includes Radio-Canada, but even if not the total for both networks would surely not surpass the soccer]…

Observations?  But then there are the figures for the 2010 Winter Olympics men’s hockey final.

Mark
Ottawa

Joannie’s a little too white for some people’s tastes. Photo: Hannibal Hanschke

Joannie Rochette won bronze in women’s figure skating not by talent, determination, and as a tribute to her recently deceased mother, but because of “racism, nationalism, pity, and politics”. So writes Orville Lloyd Douglas in the leftcoast freebie street paper.

Later realizing the paper stepped in a great big dino-sized pile of excreta, editor Charlie Smith tried to clarify why he published it. To no avail.

You can read all of it, or you can just look at his main thesis, presented in the first few paragraphs:

However, some critics on the Internet are suggesting that the judges are racists and they did not want an Asian female sweep of the Olympic medals in figure skating. I agree with this cogent assessment.

Since Joannie Rochette is a white Canadian woman, the judges made sure a white female slipped into third place to prevent an Asian sweep.

Some people are watching the Olympics in order to see the red and white. Others, like Orville and Charlie, just see the white.

Previously

The opening ceremonies were filled with too many white people. Georgia Straight, February 13.

According to the daily Metro, a Vancouver woman sold three tickets to the men’s gold-medal hockey game for $18,888 through VANOC’s fan-to-fan marketplace.

“It was three hours at Canada Hockey Place or two weeks on the beach,” said the reseller, who asked that her name not be published.

She decided to post her three $800 Class-A hockey tickets on VANOC’s official resale website in late December.

“We tried to come up with an average of what other people were asking for three tickets,” she said. Her dad eventually suggested asking for $18,888 for three seats together.

There were no takers until last Thursday. VANOC gets a 10 per cent cut.

After VANOC’s cut on both buyer and seller, that’s a $3,777.60 windfall for changing ownership of a ticket they already received full sale price for. Maybe this internet scalping thing is the next big money maker.

At a price of $6,296 each, let’s hope the buyers get their money’s worth. The face value of the tickets are listed at $800 each, which means that for a $2,400 investment, the Vancouver woman made a profit of $16,488 minus VANOC’s 10% cut.

VANCOUVER, B.C.: FEBRUARY 19, 2010 – A man is detained by Vancouver Police on Granville St. Photo Credit: Stuart Davis, PNG

By now the city of Vancouver must officially be known as the dullest party zone this side of the Arabian peninsula. While a record number of tourists and Olympic visitors descend upon the lower mainland to partake in the revelry of what is surely a unique event for the city, the buzz-killing patrol is on full alert to ensure nobody is having more of a good time than they’re supposed to.

The Vancouver police closed liquor stores in downtown Vancouver at 7pm last night, to maintain order on the streets and prevent public intoxication.

With crowds in Vancouver reaching in the thousands over the past week, the police report that “too many” incidents of public intoxication and disorder have occurred.

“We had just a large number of people downtown, a lot of public intoxication and the disorder that stemmed from that,” Constable Jana McGuinness said in an interview late Saturday.

“It was really a big street party, but the difficulty with that is there were some public safety concerns over the level of intoxication that was happening.”

To that end, the police department phoned the government’s Liquor Control branch, which controls all dispensing of beer and wine and hard alcohol in the province, and asked them to shut down four hours early. During the Olympics. During a Party.

This is like your parents coming home unexpectedly just as the house party gets underway, before any of the furniture has been broken or the TV tossed into the swimming pool yet, and ordering everybody outside under threat of calling their parents. To be a resident of Vancouver, it’s a bit of an embarrassment.

And really, what is the major problem with a little temporary public intoxication? Is society as we know it going to come to an end because we partied a little hard during the Olympics? The United States has their Mardi Gras and Spring Break, during which time the police look the other way for a week or two. When the festivities wrap up, they go back to their usual zero tolerance.

Unless there are riots and major bloodshed breaking out, what the big deal with people walking about a little bit sloshed? After all, Canada has much to celebrate, after kicking that gold medal monkey off our backs and bringing home four already.

Today Canada plays the United States in what is expected to be the most watched event for the Olympics, short of the Gold Medal game itself. In a primer for that event, the troops in Afghanistan had a little street hockey event between the Canadian and American soldiers stationed in Kandahar. Canada won 16-2.

Although few are expecting Canada to romp over the Americans by the same score when they hit the ice, the chances are that if Canada can pull off the win, there will be more than a few giddy fans who will break into the streets and revel in the alcoholic beverages readily available to thirsty fans. But will the police let Canadians in Vancouver have any fun tonight? Or will they pull the plug early, and ask everybody to get into bed by dinner time?

The police have been ticketing people $230 for the public consumption of liquor, and confiscating the bottles of those who may be travelling with liquor without being able to prove a residence they will be drinking it in.

Canadians paid for this party, with a price tag numbering in the obscene billions of dollars. The least the government can do now is let us get what we paid for. A party.

Sami, dressed in traditional clothes, walk through downtown Stockholm November 23, 2007. REUTERS/Scanpix/Bertil Ericson

Now this is one of the stranger Olympic stories floating out there. When Norway didn’t jump out to a strong lead in the medal standings in Vancouver’s Winter Olympics, the Norwegian broadcaster NRK asked a Sami shaman what was going wrong. The Sami are indigenous people to the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the shaman speculated that it was the Canadian indigenous people who had cursed the Norwegian team over B.C. fish farms:

Eirik Boie Myrhaug is quoted as saying that Indian magic might be behind Norway’s Olympic setbacks. He suggests some B.C. chiefs might have cast an evil spell on the Norwegian athletes.

As NRK notes, several B.C. chiefs did stage a 29-hour hunger strike this week to protest the 29 Norwegian-owned fish farms in the Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council’s territories, located in the Broughton Archipelago north of Vancouver.

[...]

One of the hunger strikers was Chief Bob Chamberlin from Gilford Island near Port McNeill, who denied having any mystic influence at the Olympics.

Chamberlin said he doesn’t want to be disrespectful to another people’s spiritual leader but that he can’t take credit for influencing the outcome of Olympic events.

“I can honestly report that I do not possess this kind of spiritual power he’s suggesting that I do,” Chamberlin said.

“If I did possess such a power, I don’t think I would be directing it at the Norwegian national sportsmen. I think I would direct it towards the fish farms.”

For the record, Norway is in 3rd place with 10 medals, which is ahead of Canada. Coming off an 8-0 loss in Men’s ice hockey to Team Canada, Norway took Team Switzerland to overtime today, losing 5-4. That’s the same Switzerland that took Canada to a 3-2 shootout loss. So perhaps our shaman curse is wearing off.

Photo: Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press

Only a day after announcing that 28,000 standing room tickets for events at Cypress Mountain would be canceled and refunded because the melting mountain poses too great a danger to spectators, VANOC has announced only the original buyers of the tickets will be refunded. Which means that if you got one off a scalper, well, caveat emptor. Otherwise known as, it sucks to be you, buddy.

VANOC spokesperson Renee Smith-Valade said that spectators were “repeatedly warned” that they should only buy from a legitimate source. And that would be, apparently, their “fan-to-fan marketplace”, in which buyers can legally scalp tickets to people who couldn’t get a hold of the elusive tickets in the first place. Probably because they were all sold out before they were available to the general public.

Ah yes, their fan-to-fan marketplace. It sounded like a great idea when I first heard about it way back in December.

This is the first time in Olympic history that the organizing committee for any city has set up a secure website for the express purpose of ticket scalping. But far from being some kind of convenient and altruistic service to customers, VANOC saw an opportunity to get in on the scalping business while sticking it to the suckers who would end up buying them on the street level.

According to the VANOC website, they are charging service fees for the transactions of moving tickets from buyer to seller. Even though VANOC has already made the full retail ticket price from the ticket booth, they want a piece of that scalping action. So they’re taking a 10% service fee for ticket sellers on the front end. Then they’re taking another 10% service fee for those who buy the ticket on the back end. So if a ticket gets scalped on their site for $500, that means VANOC is rolling in a cool $100 for doing nothing other than act as a validator for a ticket that’s already been sold.

But that isn’t the only ridiculous part of the fan-to-fan marketplace. Because the credit giant visa is the “only” registered credit card of the Vancouver Olympic Games, it is the only method of payment possible to process orders. So what does that mean if you want to buy a ticket, but only have Mastercard or American Express? Again, sucks to be you, buddy.

Last but not least, the guidelines for participation in the fan-to-fan marketplace states that VANOC holds all monies from buyers until the Olympics are over and ticket accounting is finalized. So the seller will receive their money, less 10%, sometime in April of 2010. Now if I were a scalper, and of course I’m not, but if I were, I would sell that ticket, without the 10% commission and the three month wait time, on the street. Then I’d have my $500 now, rather than $450 later.

As for the person whose ticket was canceled by VANOC? Again… well, you get the picture.

Another white guy not representing our true diversity.

Here’s an article from a “Manager for Diversity Initiatives at CBC Television” who complains that the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Opening Ceremonies were the “Whitest” ever:

Absolutely. Especially since Vancouver won their bid on the argument that Vancouver is the most diverse place on earth, with the highest rate of mixed-race marriage in North America, a city that is considered by many (including myself) as part of Asia (forget that “gateway to Asia” analogy—that’s so 10 years ago). The ceremony was hardly representative of Canada’s (and especially Vancouver’s) multicultural diversity.

Listen, if you’re going to reflect Canada’s diversity, you can’t go full out on aboriginal representation and then fail to represent the visible diversity of the local population. Vancouver is a city where “visible minority” and “ethnic minority” don’t mean anything anymore, because of the sheer size of the Chinese and South Asian populations.

I’m not really sure what the panic is to “represent” the visible diversity of the local population. My boy is part of the 7% non-asian children in his elementary school. We get it. This is a Pan Pacific Asian city. Does my whiteness offend you? I fear I have just become a member of an aggrieved minority.

Hey, I just had an idea. If we’ve become an Asian city, perhaps the 2010 Olympic protesters screaming about stolen native land will begin to complain to Asia?

I’m not showing you anything that the media hasn’t already shown you. I took this picture along with hundreds of other people taking the same picture in downtown Vancouver today, as the Olympic tourists descended on the city. Day two of the protests took place with an anarchists march that is best documented with incredible pictures here. I originally got wind of the riot on Twitter, but by the time I got down there, it was all over and nary a protester could be found. There’s also video and more links at the leftwing site Rabble.

When I was on my way back home, I saw that my fellow glaziers from Accurate Glass had already arrived on the scene to replace the vandalized glass at the Hudson’s Bay Company. The glass that was broken at the TD Bank [which doesn't make sense, since RBC is a sponsor] was already replaced by a piece of plywood by the time I got there, and was left completely unguarded. I assume it was only spandrel glass [just for show] then, and wouldn’t provide entry into the bank.

By the time I had walked down to the area where I had last heard there were arrests from Twitter, near the upscale Robson and Jervis, everybody seemed to be walking in the opposite direction. There were no riot police to speak of, and the police presence had dissipated as well. In fact, it was serenity as far as the eye could see, albeit extremely crowded with Olympic tourists. I walked around the rest of the downtown for the next couple of hours, over to Waterfront, up Hastings, down to BC Place, and back to the Vancouver Art Gallery. The only protests I saw were the people astounded at the prices from the thousands of vendors trying to hawk their Olympic merchandise.

On Robson street, it was relatively uneventful, other than people entering the upscale clothing shops.

The Olympic flames lit at the Vancouver Convention Centre on Waterfront.

My old workplace, now an Olympic venue.

Marc Emery and the Amsterdam Cafe doing brisk business with the demonweed.

The site of the infamous “Olympic colours” Beatty Wall that were spraypainted over the exhibits of local street artists prior to the Games. The sign indicates something is coming soon.

For all those who regularly look forward to ordinary Friday Photography, I apologize, but I just spent the better part of the last four hours watching anti-poverty and far-left demonstrators march on BC Place in Vancouver. All in all it was a more peaceful and subdued event than I thought. Only a few people were hauled over the gates and into the paddywagons by the time 6:40pm rolled around, and it got too dark to photograph any longer. Here’s a photo journal of the day.

I decided to go with fellow Vancouver writer and contributor to National Post’s Full Comment, Jonathon Narvey. When we arrived at Robson and Howe, we couldn’t find where the supposed demonstration was.

Ah, there are the protesters. Huddled in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the troops were mobilizing for a march down Georgia. But not before several gratuitous speeches about poverty, the Olympics and, as the theme seemed to be, the Olympics on stolen native land. As you can see, the Olympic protest brought out all the usual “warmists”.

Some of the special interests in view: anti-war/torture, water rights, tar sands, no one is illegal, homes not games

What would a demonstration be without really freaky weird looking hippies in costumes playing music? The flag on the right is the anarchy flag.

Stop paying the rich! Jonathon interviewed one of the communists and asked him whether they had gained any new recruits. He said yes.

Well, it looks by my watch to be 2 hours and 13 minutes until the inevitable. Not quite sure why it says 28 more days until the Olympics. Other than the cop in the picture, police presence was invisible here.

You never really know who you’re going to run into at a left-wing rally. For instance, this woman was rallying against the next Olympics, not these ones. Sochi is a city in Russia that will host the 2014 Games. She was trying to draw awareness to the Circassian Genocide that took place in 1864.

The protesters move out, down Georgia and headed to BC Place. They begin chanting “No games on indigenous land!” Prominent here are the native Mohawk flags from the Oka crisis years ago.

The natives are restless. I know the quality of the picture isn’t the greatest, but it was already raining and getting darker out, and the viewer must appreciate how difficult it was to shoot this. There were hundreds of people running ahead trying to take similar photographs as the demonstration moved forward at a good clip. At this point there were definitely at least 3,000 in the procession.

In case you didn’t notice, it’s getting busy. It’s difficult to find some free space to walk unless you move away from the crowd. The chanting and slogans are getting louder.

The group “No one is illegal” marches in front and to the right. It looks like far-left immigrant activist Harsha Walia with a megaphone peeking out from behind the massive sign.

I moved away from the protest down Georgia to get a bit of a breather from the crowd. An interesting side note here is that at this point there was an Olympic-approved native event being hosted by the Four Host Nations group to my right. Picture to follow.

The Olympic native event was sparsely attended. But the juxtaposition of pro/anti-Olympic aboriginals was too good to ignore.

The procession took a turn on Hamilton and moved to Robson heading for Beatty and BC Place for the Opening Ceremonies. It’s getting dark. Flash photography not working so well.

That’s as close as you’re getting Team Protest. The RCMP and hundreds of other police converged to make a complete barrier around BC Place. Protesters began hurling liquids at the horsemen, who had face shields as well as the horses.

My camera isn’t up to the task of nighttime photography in open spaces. The police move in, and hold off the crowd. They arrest a few people, dragging one of them through a deposit of horse manure. It looked pretty deliberate, since it was the only manure anywhere in the vicinity.

The opening ceremonies began at 6pm in conjunction with a police movement to push the protesters back 15-20 feet. After some fierce shoving, the protesters retreated, and then began shouting and chanting again. The crowd dispersed somewhat, while many watched the opening ceremonies on a TV displayed outside BC Place. The protesters booed, but the sound drowned them out. By 6:45 only two people had been arrested, but it didn’t seem prudent to stay and watch anymore. The hardcore protesters weren’t budging, even as hundreds more police reinforced.

Related

Jonathon has his post up here and more pictures here. He also has a good YouTube video of some of the interviews with the activists:

It’s no secret that Vancouver wants to be the “greenest city” in the world, and I’m not just talking about the hippies sipping on soy lattés on Main street. The city itself signed a green action plan to achieve certain goals by the year 2020, with a team consisting of Gregor Robertson, David Suzuki, former Premier Mike Harcourt, and other starry-eyed dreamers.

Among their ten long-term goals is human health and clean water:

8. Clean Water: Enjoy the best drinking water of any major city in the world
2020 Target: Always meet or beat the strongest of B.C., Canada, and World Health Organization drinking water standards; reduce per capita water consumption by 33 per cent

That means that the city is pushing their clean water as the natural and green way to go, while encouraging the reduction of bottled water consumption.

These improvements will usher in an era of outstanding drinking water quality for the residents of Vancouver. By vigorously promoting the quality of its drinking water, Vancouver can help put an end to the wasteful trend toward increasing consumption of bottled water. Bottled water wastes energy and resources and contributes to pollution and solid waste. Vancouver’s tap water costs about $0.00065 per litre whereas buying a one-litre bottle of water can cost as much as $1.75, more than 2,500 times the price.

It’s not like they’re not right. The price of bottled water is heavily inflated, and can actually cost more than the per litre price of gasoline or milk. I’ve never really understood the point of bottled water. I’m reminded of the comedian Lewis Black’s skit on bottled water. In the old days, when we were thirsty, we used to go to the hose, turn it on, and enjoy the benefits of water pumped right to our doorstep. But no, that was too convenient. So we decided to bottle it and put it in supermarkets, so we can get into a car and drive five miles to get what we already have at home for free.

Unfortunately for the city of Vancouver, the Olympics are here, and with it the behemoth sponsors who demand prime time coverage of their products and services. It’s bad timing that Metro Vancouver has launched a campaign encouraging Olympic tourists to drink Vancouver tap water instead of bottled water, since that will lead to a conflict with bottling giant Coca-Cola Limited, one of the biggest Olympic sponsors going.

Coke sells Dasani bottled water, and has a large market share of the industry in Canada. This, despite the fact that in 2005 it was revealed that most bottled water is little more than municipal water that is reprocessed and marked up for resale.

“We’re supplying the water free,” Metro Vancouver’s water committee chairman Tim Stevenson said at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in downtown Vancouver during the launch Tuesday of the tap water campaign.

Coca-Cola is expecting to sell over a million plastic bottles of water during the Olympic Games, but the company says that 80% of plastic products are recycled in the province anyway. [So that's what, only a waste of 200,000 bottles?]

Metro Vancouver will be “competing” with Coca-Cola at some Olympic sites where the city will be providing free water to tourists, at the same time that Coca-Cola will be selling water bottles. It will be an interesting test of the brand strength of Coca-Cola and Dasani, to compete with a product being offered at no cost. The giant sponsor can’t be pleased about the water wars about to ensue.