Sorry, Vanoc, I intend to give you exactly what you've given Squamish: nothingI will admit to once being an Olympic supporter. I was down at the Brew Pub that summer morning in 2003 when the announcement was made, and I believed then that the Olympics might just be a great thing for the province and for Squamish.
I was naive. I thought that the Olympics was about sport. I believed it when Vanoc said that Squamish was going to be the "heart of 2010." I was such a fool.
And I should have known better. Almost from the moment Vancouver got the games, Vanoc started working overtime to alienate people: the Olympia Pizza fiasco, the Squamish banners, the trademarking of "with glowing hearts," the hubris of the organization-and the whole Olympic movement-became impossible to ignore.
This arrogance so put me off that I didn't even watch any of the Beijing Olympics. And this from someone who faithfully watches the Tour de France every summer; someone with a really high tolerance for hypocrisy, corruption and arrogance.
These days, it's the totalitarian nature of Olympic Inc. that's getting under my skin. My first experience came last year. I wanted to buy tickets to a concert at the Orpheum and called Ticketmaster to place the order. However, when I tried to pay, I was told they weren't accepting Mastercard; the concert was some kind of Olympic event and Visa was a sponsor. If I wanted tickets, I'd have to get a Visa card or drive to a Ticketmaster location and pay in cash. I skipped the event.
I then heard about a mother who took her daughter to the Callaghan over the Christmas season to rent her some skis and send her out for a day on the trails so that she could experience cross-country skiing, but she only had a Mastercard and the Callaghan is an Olympic site. Sorry dear, no skiing today. So a taxpayer who paid for, and in effect owns the facility, can't use it because of corporate sponsorship. It's galling.
And the world of Olympic Inc. does get more absurd. If you check out the Vanoc employees in Whistler, you'll notice that they have fancy new walkie-talkies. Ask them why there's a piece of black tape covering 'Motorola'. Well, Motorola isn't an Olympic sponsor, so Vanoc, in its efforts to cleanse the world of all things non-Olympic, sent someone up from Vancouver with a roll of tape to cover Motorola logo. One employee told me the nameplate on the microwave in their work lunchroom was also covered. But that must have been done as a joke-I think. I hope!
So my house will remain an Olympic-free zone- I'll give my spare rooms to no one, except for any family members who may want to visit, and I'm going to leave the country.
My travel agent, after all, still accepts Mastercard.
