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By G.D. Maxwell Got a second? As much as I itch to, I can’t bring myself to ask that question of our esteemed Councillor Wells. Though Kristi and I don’t necessarily see eye to eye on many – most – issues, I feel her pain.

By G.D. Maxwell

Got a second?

As much as I itch to, I can’t bring myself to ask that question of our esteemed Councillor Wells. Though Kristi and I don’t necessarily see eye to eye on many – most – issues, I feel her pain. After all, I often say things that are met with total disbelief and stunned silence as well.

Not long after moving to Canada and going to work for a heartless financial institution, I was invited to a Montreal Expos baseball game. Co-workers and assorted hangers-on numbering some two dozen assembled in very good seats not far from the Expos’ dugout and began an evening of what amounted to indentured servitude on the part of that section’s beer vendor. Being American and considering the sport my game, I comported myself like any red-blooded Yank – shouting witticisms and borderline obscenities at players on both sides and, particularly, umpires.

I believe it was mid-game when Steve Rogers began to flag on the mound. In a bellicose and somewhat slurred voice I hollered, "Schtick a fawk in ’im. ‘E’s done." This was, of course, after comparing his last few pitches unfavourably to those my dear old granny could throw and wondering aloud how much he’d been paid to boot the game.

It was at that unfortunate moment I looked around and first grasped the total disbelief of my colleagues. They were silent, mouths agape, all staring intently at me as though auditioning for an E.F. Hutton commercial. As God is my witness, I did not know Canadians had never learned to heckle at ball games and, worse yet, considered it a social faux pas to do so in a voice loud enough for more than the person immediately beside you to hear. During my long socialization towards becoming Canadian, eh? it was the first of many intensely remorseful moments.

I felt sorry for those people.

I’d like to think Kristi might have gotten some support had she been heckling Jack Poole last week at council. Instead, she withered in the pregnant silence of other members of council struck dumb by her ill-timed motion to support the Vancouver Olympic bid. Alas, she wasn’t heckling and the rest of council will most definitely support the bid once the terms of payola have been spelled out, in detail, to their satisfaction.

I can’t get too excited about the bid. I’m not fer it; I’m not agin it. It still seems too iffy and unreal to get worked up about. I don’t suspect the Vancouver bid will win and there’s no reason to think it won’t either. That’s because there are no ascertainable criteria upon which to guess the IOC’s decision. Part caprice, part graft, part politics, part raw power, the awarding of the Games is like gambling in old-time Vegas. You know the mob controls the table and whatever happens, you won’t be allowed to win too big before some goon strongarms you out of his share.

Only with the Olympics, the goons get their share up front.

So what’s Whistler get? Some sort of athletes’ village, slated for transformation into affordable, staff housing after the Games. Expansion of muni boundaries to bring some whopping part of the Callaghan within RMOW. Growth for the future and goodbye OCP, hello subdivision city, albeit the kind of subdivision we’d like to see, not what some unconscionable, rapacious developer might foist on us. Indemnification against the muni being stuck with costs arising out of the Olympics. Legacies, bribes, whatever.

Staff housing is good. Having admitted that, it isn’t really staff housing – as in apartment-style, seasonal staff – that worries me as much these days as it did a few years ago.

It’s housing for service staff who want to make Whistler home, contribute positively to the community, raise kids here and live somewhat comfortably on service industry salaries, that’s a bigger issue. As Whistler grows larger, more luxurious, vacant and darker, those folks are being squeezed up valley and down.

I guess the Callaghan’s the answer for them. Something more remote – though not quite Squamish – more affordable, more, well, out of sight. And it’s a good thing because even Smilin’ Jack is hard pressed to deny Olympics = more expensive housing. More expensive housing = even fewer people who can afford to buy a home in Whistler and fewer marginal homeowners, e.g., aging hippies who got in early but still work service jobs, who can afford to hang on to the home they have in the face of rising assessments and taxes. Screw ’em. They ought to be sellin’ real estate and makin’ a good living anyway.

Indemnification seems a bit illusory too. Indemnification against what? For how long? For out of pocket expenses incurred because of the Olympics? That’s a good start. Bet Montrealers still wish they’d have gotten a deal like that. But really, isn’t that just scratching the surface?

So if Whistler suffers a loss because of the Olympics, senior levels of government will make us whole. They’ll pony up your tax dollars and mine, throw in a bit from the oil patch, some from prairie farmers and tomato growers in Ontario, spare change from the guy who runs the frites truck in Trois Rivières, and pogey clawback from outport Newfoundland and send it to us. After all it’s national pride that got us into this mess to begin with. That’s a good start.

But does indemnification begin to cover the other costs the community will incur? How many bucks do we get for the loss of vitality we suffer when the spiraling cost of housing gets an Olympic turbo boost? What’s the price we put on our quality of life when we’re left with a bigger, better, more crowded highway post games? How will the worker bees like their commute to the Callaghan during ever more crowded ski season weekend afternoons?

Beats me.

I really don’t expect a lot of us will be here in 2010 to find out. Market forces, political dithering, chance-of-a-lifetime dealmaking and burnout will take its toll. Approaching geezerhood, we’ll fondly remember what Whistler used to be like. We’ll bore grandkids with stories about how vital the place was before it became a retirement village for rich yuppie scum.

It won’t all be because of the Olympics – that’ll just hasten the inevitable.

Any burning opposition I have to the Olympics has more to do with animus towards the IOC. Undemocratic, totalitarian, corrupt, greedy – and those are the good qualities – the organization has undermined Olympic ideals at every chance. Athletes and athletics are distant memories in the powerhouse rush to auction off quadrennial rights, license trinkets, choreograph spectacle and feather the nests of petty, bureaucratic bloodsuckers worldwide who make their living off the dreams of kids.

Hell, let’s invite ‘em. They sound like our kind of folks.