My Small...no

Was just compelled into tolerating a 2010 Olympics advert on teevee. An everyman mob of spectators rising to their mob feet, faces twisted in mob euphoria, and everything wrong about those wild mob eyes. A pack of actors reacting...nay, emoting...to a make-believe spectacle in an elitist's two-weeks' fantasy. Fitting.

I was only another of the small voices on the losing side of a civic plebiscite. But against this holiday for the privileged happening in 2010 Vancouver. I could not be in favour, knowing as I've heard it said, for years, Olympics after Olympics, the proven track-record of cost overruns, civic corruption and scandalous disruptions, of future generations expected to smile and shoulder the debt. Quick googling, and in no paricular order, as I recalled former host cities, returned a sickeningly lengthening list. Montreal. Calgary. Nagano. Lillehammer. Atlanta. Sydney. Salt Lake City. Athens. Beijing. Adding Vancouver...fast-tracking and smiles...and the World should only ever see our smiles, urge the party faithful. Local media long onside. Greedy landlords already evicting tenants who stand between them and gleefully emptying visitors' pockets...as happened here during Expo 86. Capping this farce, so far, one billion of somebody's dollars suddenly urgently needed from somewhere to complete that Athlete's village. Let's just say there was a gross cost underestimate for that stack of boxes. And still awaiting the numbers for security — for keeping everybody safe, when the world comes to Vancouver... .

Yesss, only against it, only a party pooper, me. But now I've come to hate it. Hating it enough that I'd wish myself anywhere but here, now inside one year. All right, I'd hope not hatefilled, but scowling in reflex whenever these media persons, decked out in those proprietary rings and faces aglow in anticipation, cheeringly count-down the impending civic disaster they acquired broadcast rights to. Scowling, too, because these paragons of journalistic integrity, and neutrality, have been the same ones telling us when things went badly.

Know I wasn't the only party pooper to vote my little no in the plebiscite.

Here, these were those official, City of Vancouver plebiscite results: 46% of Vancouver's electorate turned out, an unprecedented voter turn-out. 64% of 134,791 ballots in favour of Vancouver hosting that expensive winter's fortnight in February 2010. 36% against.

And now for the funnier side of this. After the Athletes' Village scandal broke this past January, and certain heads actually rolled, CBC Online ran a poll most of a week, feeling about for public sentiment, pro or No, and of 2178 folks polled (when I saved these numbers, January 19, about noon), fully 64% made their mark by I always thought hosting the games was a bad idea.

Curiouser and curiouser...hmmm. Polite naysayers, like me, packing CBC's stats our way? Possibly. Home and property owners, hearts fibrillating over their tax assessments, forgetting how they voted? Perhaps. I'm curious how we 134,791 registered voters who did vote might vote today, knowing, or suspecting it then, what we still can only suspect.