Things fall apart

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This other man I had dreamed

A drunken, vainglorious lout.

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart.

Yet I number him in the song;

He, too, has resigned his part

In the casual comedy;

He, too, has been changed in his turn,

Transformed utterly:

        A terrible beauty is born.

(Excerpts from poetry by W. B. Yeats)

I don't know how to feel

And yet, I do. It's a stepped-on, violated feeling. It's as if the city has been raped. And I'm not even in the heart of the damage. In the core of the heartbreak, small businesses are contemplating the possibility of permanently going under. Suddenly, a flood of high-end goods has appeared on Craigslist, Louis Vuitton bags and Manolo Blahniks and such, at bargain prices as the thugs seek to quickly unload their "hot" goods for a profit.

My only consolation is that these people are incredibly stupid, which means they will eventually be caught. Or so I hope. They ruined Vancouver's "moment", our chance to prove once and for all that 1994 was an unrepeatable fluke, and forever tainted the world's view of our beautiful city.

The foreign press has referred to us as a "backwater fishing village". Rioting over an "ice hockey game" has turned us into a laughingstock. I feel heavy, as if I weigh about 500 pounds. There is something like a stone sitting on my heart.

There is something I must write about before that stone crushes me, and I want to preface it by saying that this represents strictly my own perceptions of a situation I was not directly involved in. Last night I talked to my daughter, an intrepid, multi-award-winning reporter who was in the thick of the riot, smelled the smoke and heard the screams.

For several hours I lost touch with her, and as it turned out, she was indeed stuck in the worst of it, walking along alone without even a cameraman for protection. Since she's an attractive blonde who weighs 104 pounds, she could have been raped or killed.

I talked to her on the phone yesterday and heard her desperate disillusionment. Even as the game started and the thousands of spectators mobbed in the downtown, she felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She went back to the office and said, "We've got to get ready, guys. There's going to be a riot." Everyone was sure she was crazy. They brushed her off, even felt offended.

But she read the crowd correctly. She believes this would have happened, win or lose. Those thugs were just waiting for an opportunity. They were not even watching the screen. The air was electric, the crowd tensed for an explosion such as we've never seen.

Now she feels vindicated. But (and this is strictly my own opinion, not anything she told me: if anyone tries to get her in trouble over this I will scream blue murder) what happens in situations like this is that the other person, the person who refused to believe in the possibility of horrific damage, is embarrassed. So that means SHE embarrassed THEM by being correct! This kind of rare gift, not just of perception but of individual courage, does not lead to rewards, but to ostracism and humiliated silence.

What sort of world is it where such unusual, invaluable sensitivity is shunted aside and ignored, then swept under the rug like a source of embarrassment? She cried, "Fire! Fire!" and everyone said, "Chill out, there's no fire. You're just a killjoy."

Even the cops missed it. I don't care what anyone says: the cops bungled it.  They made a hash of it and won't even admit it! My daughter alone knew exactly what was coming, and everyone told her she was crazy. 

I don't know how to feel. Or perhaps I do. Every time I think of the situation I get a sick feeling. This has added a new layer to the shock and disgust. Who knows how much of this hell could have been prevented, but it wasn't. It wasn't, because they told her she was crazy. Crazy for being able to perceive and understand the enormity of the coming storm.

A 9-11 in my neigborhood

No matter what you've heard on the news about "riots in Vancouver", it was infinitely worse. After we lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins last night, the hooligans in the city must have decided it warranted rioting, looting and general mayhem. It looked a war zone, with burning cars, smashed-in store fronts, tear gas, explosions, and thousands of people rampaging, or just standing around watching the spectacle and refusing to go home. I haven't seen anything like that since 9-11.

Worst of all, my daughter, an intrepid news reporter, was caught in it. I saw her doing an interview with horrified Canucks fans early on in the riot, then that was it. Didn't see her again. I couldn't reach her on her cell, and her cleaning lady was filling in for the babysitter who had to go home. I called her mother-in-law, and she didn't know anything either. My husband Bill kept saying, she's OK, she can take care of herself, but these images were right out of hell, and it went on and on and on and just got worse and worse.

These hooligans jumped around and yelled and waved at the camera in delight, loving the attention. After losing to the Bruins, they were determined to have their fun. Hundreds of cops wearing gas masks formed phalanxes with shields, threw tear gas and pepper spray, brought in dogs and horses, but these criminals had bombs and fire and knives and no conscience and didn't care who they hurt or whose property they destroyed.

I sat through hours of this as it continued to escalate. I felt panicky and helpless. They kept saying things like, "We lost Rob Brown", meaning someone had grabbed the camera and smashed it on the ground or the camera person was sucked into the mob and pulled away, but I kept thinking, "Don't say 'lost'." I got furious with Bill who just sat there impassive, not saying anything, not reacting at all. He had more reaction to the hockey game.

Finally after more than 3 hours of watching the mayhem (with people lying on the ground badly injured and bleeding, no medical help anywhere, and rumors someone had been killed), I had the idea to call the news office,certain it would be a busy signal or automated system. Someone was there! They told me they had seen my daughter somewhere in the building, that she was OK.

I got an email from her this morning saying an intern had driven her home (the parkade had been locked down, her Blackberry stolen, public transit stalled, and it was nearly impossible to leave the downtown on foot with so much blocked off, though the police kept begging the gawkers to disperse). I sensed her weariness and disillusion. She had been in that mess,that chaos generated by citizens of Vancouver, inhaling the fumes and hearing the screams.

The gawkers may have looked blameless, but they were choking up the streets, blocking police access, providing an audience for the hooligans as they smashed everything in sight, and holding up all their little devices so they could be the first to post all this hell on YouTube or sell it to the media. Of all the horrible images from that night, this was one of the most disturbing. These weren't even rioters, just bystanders, but they had to get in on the bonanza. This was reality TV at its most dramatic, not to mention marketable.

I think of Vancouver in smoking ruins, and I feel heartsick. Memories of our jubilant celebration after the 2010 Olympics are still fresh in my mind. What went so horribly wrong? I'm no sports fan, but even I had a bit of Stanley Cup fever: you couldn't help but get caught up in it. The game was pretty depressing, but hey: that's the nature of sports. It's a competition, and one side wins, while the other side loses.

We teach our little league and junior hockey teams that they need to be good losers and practice sportsmanship. Then we give them this horrific example.Yes, most people were horrified, but somehow doing it at all crosses a social boundary that can never be quite as inviolate again.  


I don't know what to think or feel or say. I keep thinking everyone's just shrugging and saying, "Yeah, that's too bad about the Bruins." They think of it as a little horseplay that got out of hand. But this was a war zone, nothing less. A war zone in one of the most elegant, cultured, beautiful cities on earth.