The Written Word
for July 15, 2001

So it would seem that Vancouver/Whistler has a lock on the Winter Olympics of 2010. Leaving aside the fact that I’ll be damned near 80 if I’m anything at all, and not likely to be participating, I still feel constrained to ask some questions.

The "booster" in me wants to see this happen, of course. I am a life long British Columbian who has spent most of his years in Greater Vancouver. It seems churlish therefore to ask any questions that might be taken as less than wildly enthusiastic.

Vancouver would have to build a lot of facilities including an ice rink big enough to permit speed skating and all the spectators that will, we hope, throng to the event. What happens to this rink afterwards? I may have missed something but I haven’t heard any great clamor for such a facility until now. Are we going to be so overrun with speed skaters after the Olympics that the place will be a fiscal success?

I know nothing about the sport but they tell me that they will have to build elaborate setups at Whistler for Bob Sledding. Again, this is not a sport that attracts Sunday crowds to the ski hills - what do we do with this run after the games are gone?

But there are problems unconnected to the actual sports themselves not the least of which is, how do we get all those people to Whistler? I live on the Sea to Sky Highway and I’m not being a "NIMBY" when I cast doubt on the suitability of this road as a route to a Winter Olympics. I can put up with some more traffic for a few weeks but this road can scarcely accommodate the weekenders who have condos at Whistler.

I have heard it said that we could take people by ferry up Howe Sound to Squamish and thence by bus or jitney to the games site. I hate to mention this but Winter Games are customarily held in wintertime and a ferry ride up Howe Sound in January may not prove all that comfortable. There is talk of rail travel – good idea if it will do the job. But who is going to provide this and the cars and help needed?

Many see this as a wonderful opportunity to build a new road to Whistler it being generally conceded that there’s not much you can do with the Sea to Sky which is, for much of its journey, hewn out of granite, The thought of building a highway through the watershed is a daunting one – as I write this there is a water warning for the Village of Lions Bay where I live. Such a highway would bring out all protesters, native and otherwise, the civilized world holds. It would make the battle in Seattle pale in comparison.

There is, of course, the cost and the notion that it will all be recovered and then some. This has proved to be so for Summer Games ever since the Los Angeles games of 1984. But is it the same for winter games if it is not, as was the case in Calgary, tied in with an ice arena the city didn’t have and wanted?

Yes, I was delighted Toronto lost the Summer Games thus making Vancouver/Whistler games a near lock. But boosters are often noted for rather fuzzy thinking when money other than their own is being spent.

We must, as we go along, stay focussed so that, when all is said and done, we’re not left with a debt and a bunch of useless edifices.