Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The juxtaposition within the spectacle

Chilly mornings, cloudy skies and the telltale creep of snow down the mountains.
59570_l

Chilly mornings, cloudy skies and the telltale creep of snow down the mountains. Can it be too many more sleeps? Is it too early to start waxing?

No day of the year, not birthdays, Christmas, national holidays, nothing, can touch the excitement of opening day at a ski resort. Particularly the one where you live. This one. And this opening day will be more exciting than most. For starters, it'll come early. The Groundhog told me. You know the Groundhog, scruffy fellow, hangs out around Starbucks trying to convince people getting coffee they are only hastening the end of the world. A dedicated acidulated water man, Groundhog chooses to protest Starbucks because he thinks their logo is demonic and their culture moronic. "Venti my ass, man. Not even the Italians will touch that monster," he rails at anyone gauche enough to order coffee by the bucket.

Rational Max knows Tuesday's snow was just a teaser, Mother Nature's peepshow for hardcore snowverts. But all seductions begin with a tease; ignore them at your peril for you know not what you'll miss.

The other reason this year's installment of opening day will be more exciting than usual is, ahem, the Olympics. Since we're likely to be mired in chaos from late January until late March - generally thought of as the heart of the season but perhaps this year known as the heartless season - we'll have to get our licks in early. From the time the rope drops in November until the barricades go up in January we'll have, El Niño willing, a brief 60 days to give 'er and ski down to Creekside without raising our hands, spreading our feet and assuming the position. With so little time and so much snow, we'll be left with scant choice but to ski like there's no tomorrow.

And so, the question is posed: Why not enjoy, if that's the right word, the spectacle that's about to befall our happy mountain home and protest it at the same time? I think any mind sufficiently flexible to embrace eating fruit and nuts in the same mouthful can juggle that juxtaposition.

There's something alluring and magnetic about the Olympics. Like a car wreck on the highway, it's hard not to take a peek. Perhaps the draw stems from a simpler time when we were simpler people and the Olympics was more about sport and less about money, power and politics. When, say, Avery Brundage was president of the IOC and, having been a former Olympian, attended to watch and take part in the festivities without the need to dictate five-star lodging and floor to ceiling televisions, hot and cold running toadies and a bimbo in every pot.

Of course, that was when the Olympic athletes were, more or less, regular people with rare athletic ability, people who actually held jobs and trained in their spare time as opposed to professional athletes who train year-round and complain that their government stipends, sponsorship money and honoraria simply aren't enough to live on and hire the best coaches in the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting the athletes are causal forces in this perversion. They're the little people in the Olympic machine, shaped and formed to fit the mold created by the IOC.

But when we were kids, we didn't know anything about the cynical, political manipulations going on behind the scenes. We didn't know Avery Brundage was a bitter man who carried a lifelong grudge against Jim Thorpe and personally blocked every effort to reinstate his two gold medals from the 1912 Olympics. We didn't know Juan Antonio Samaranch, Excellency as he insisted on being called, was reputed to be a Franco fascist who turned a blind eye to performance-enhancing drugs and blatant corruption among IOC members, most of whom he'd appointed. When we were kids, it was all about the athletes and the thrill of competition. And that was enough.

But maybe that's not enough any more. Certainly it's not enough for some people who see the Games as a social and moral outrage and can't resist the opportunity to make their protest public. How we react to and treat those people will say far more about us, our society and our country than all the gold medals we hope to win.

What, for example, does it say about us that the RCMP has been contacting local residents and "requesting" one-on-one meetings - at the stationhouse - to "discuss" their protest plans? The short answer to such requests is clearly, "None of your business." But the chilling effect of our local police force taking such an advanced interest in the intentions of people who have a long and public history of peaceful protest is profound. It's an outrage. It's a disgrace. They should be ashamed of themselves for doing it and we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting them. Note to RCMP: stop it now and get back to enforcing real laws.

What does it say about the perversion of fundamental personal freedoms that the billion dollar Olympic security machine wants to set up "free-speech zones" where people can protest to their heart's desire... no doubt in sufficiently obscure areas that no one will be made uncomfortable by their presence. I dunno, I always thought we already had a free-speech zone; it's called Canada.

" I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind ." Those provocative words were spoken by that poster child for firebrand radicalism, John G. Diefenbaker. Yes, that John Diefenbaker.

If Olympic security and the RCMP want to establish free-speech zones, let 'em. If protesters want to ignore them and protest anywhere they choose, let 'em. As for me, I'll do my VANOC volley job, schmooze the tourists with my own brand of local lore and protest the excesses of the Olympics. If the Mounties want to know what I have in mind, it's to be the gum on everyone's shoe, the guy in Celebration Plaza drinking Pepsi, the director of the theatre of the absurd.

Oh, and the guy singing O Canada when a Canadian athlete finally stands atop the podium in her or his own country.