Gosh, is it 2010 already? Yikes. I must have blinked and missed a few years. Did the Canucks finally listen to all those knowledgeable hockey fans and trade the Sedins?
Anyway, in the spirit of starting the New Year with a clean slate, except in my cluttered basement, I'm getting rid of a few leftover awards from the recent past. Oyez, oyez!
Rabbit redux
The Zelig Award for popping up everywhere goes to our shy, retiring Premier, who brandished his well-worn red mittens at every Olympic photo op and high-profile event he could find, no matter how far afield.
Gordon Campbell's penchant for appearing in so many snapshots in so short a time reminds me of a long-ago assignment I had at The Edmonton Journal. Accompanied by a photographer, I was ordered to some rural outpost (no, not Calgary) to interview a magpie that supposedly talked. (The apex of my so-called career.)
The photographer took myriad pictures of the magpie. Later, when he developed the archaic material used at the time known as film, he discovered that just about every photo had the family's runny-nosed 10-year-old in the corner of the frame, holding up his pet rabbit.
Whenever I see Mr. Campbell's beaming face crowding into torch-relay photos from Athens to Halifax to Quebec City to Ottawa, and on and on, I'm reminded of that kid with the rabbit.
Liberties with liberties?
The coveted Rod Mickleburgh Award for exaggeration is handed to Robert Holmes, president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. In presenting his own year-end award, a highly-esteemed "Naughty," to all governments involved in the Olympics, Mr. Holmes singled out the recipients "for Beijing 2.0-style censorship, for stunning failures of transparency and accountability, for a billion-dollar security budget that will leave us with the 'legacy' of militarized public space and surveillance infrastructure, for breaking promises to protect the vulnerable, for failing to use a unique opportunity to leverage human rights." Whew.
Militarized public space? What could that be? Maybe, in keeping with the "Beijing 2.0-style censorship" we apparently have, it means Beijing-style tanks in city squares. Governments, come clean.
As to the aforementioned Beijing 2.0-style censorship, I must have dozed through all those arrests and jailings of would-be anti-Olympic protesters and petitioners that characterized the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. Reminder to self: Pay more attention.
Border bashing
The George W. Bush/CBC Executives Award for dumb decisions is given to the Canadian border guards who decided American broadcaster Amy Goodman needed to be grilled for 90 minutes on her views of the Olympics before deeming her fit to enter the country.
Late, honourable mention to the municipal moron who decided the delightful, homespun mural on the wall bordering the old Vancouver bus depot needed to be painted over in blue in time for the Olympics.
Sentence? What sentence?
And finally, the Juan Samaranch Award for good International Olympic Committee citizenship is bestowed on the worthy Kun Hee Lee of South Korea. Mr. Lee, former chairman of Olympic sponsor Samsung, had his three-year prison term for tax evasion and embezzlement erased by presidential decree so that he could help the country's bid for the 2018 Winter Games. Oh, those Olympic ideals.
Protesters, take note
Memo to all those rallying around the ludicrous slogan, "No Olympics on stolen native land." If you are really interested in raising serious issues instead of just trying to draw attention to yourselves, take a look at this week's dignified, heartfelt "protest" along the Olympic torch-relay route by natives decrying hundreds of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.
Scores gathered by the windswept Manitoba highway, some holding up poignant signs with photos of disappeared victims, some on horseback in magnificent regalia, others just shivering sorrowfully in the cold.
They did not blockade. They did not disrupt. They did not yell obscenities about the Olympics. But their cause was just, and stories about their vigil and the plight of the missing wound up being carried across the country.
Imagine that.
(A raspberry, however, to the Olympic torch caravan, which sped by the natives without even slowing down to acknowledge their presence. Insufficient corporate marketing opportunities, I guess.)
Psssst ...
Is anyone out there excited about the Olympics? Mayor Robertson?