I moved to Vancouver (North Vancouver - the area between downtown, ocean and mountains) about seven years ago and I’m still in love with this area. Like many people living here, I had mixed reactions when I heard “my” city will host the Olympic Games. I spent several years in Montreal and I’m well aware of the financial disaster caused by the same event to the province long time ago. I also expect taxes will raise after the event, house prices will get even higher and someone (us!) will have to pay for the bad management of our elected people.

The Good

We’re right in the middle of these games and I have mixed reactions about what’s going on. On the bright side, I enjoyed watching Wayne Gretzky, Steve Nash and Donald Sutherland honored in the opening ceremony. This country (MY country) knows how to honor value, even if they moved to the States long time ago. I come from Romania and I’m frequently disgusted when my old country is so bitter about the millions of people living somewhere else.

I also loved the Canadian athletes who brought us medals, especially gold (at least two of them were born in North Vancouver). I love hockey and I’m sooo afraid Canada will make some huge mistakes “on Canadian soil”. I love the young people who live here or in Whistler and welcome visitors with their joy and hospitality.

However, on the other side, there are more and more things I get seriously frustrated with. Yes, I know, we had some bad weather (in fact warm weather, with rain) the first few days. And this was clearly bad luck, because last year we had packs of snow for several weeks in Vancouver. Or last November it was freezing (unexpected for that time of the year).

The Bad

The ceremony was great (I’m an IT guy and I still wonder how they did with the huge projections on the floor screen), but was surrounded as we know by catastrophes: the death in luge, the First Nations chiefs missing the opening, the malfunction with the Olympic flame… The frustration grew stronger when I looked at the failures and criticism taken by the air and ice from the Richmond Oval, at the bad coverage from the British press (”worst games ever”), at the cancellation of all tickets for the Cypress mountain venues. I’m sad because I lived and worked in Canada for half of my life and I’m well aware - no offense, please - of the fact managers here do sometimes a bad job. Municipalities are interested to make money, bad they usually spend waaay more. Contracts are granted to cheap buses from California that fail to climb our hills. And you see rarely the right people, with the right skills and know-how, at the right place. They all love to manage, to control, to dictate.

My biggest frustration comes from the coverage of these Olympics by the Canadian broadcasters. I started to look to NBC or on the Internet to find out what’s really happening in my city or to watch interesting stories and documentaries about the athletes. To avoid the traffic and crowds, I haven’t seen yet the flame, in downtown, but I was planning to do so in the weekend. Guess what: I found out from NBC that it is surrounded by an ugly fence and you have to wait in line. Because the combined CTV-TSN-SportsNet coverage of these games show us long minutes with boring commentators TALKING about these games, instead of SHOWING the games. They expose for only few seconds a lovely image with our gorgeous Vancouver, then they cover it up quickly with an over-sized and ugly logo. How do you promote Vancouver and Whistler to the world, you ignorant broadcasters?!

You have a lousy hockey game where Canada is almost outplayed (again!) by Switzerland? You go to their common website and find just one article where people are not allowed to post comments (to see at least other opinions)! You go to the CBC website and find another lousy site, showing only 5 comments per page, with comments open for only two ours or so. It’s like our Canadian broadcasters try to shut us down, they don’t care about other opinions.

I wake up every morning and I always have to watch on CTV a really fat guy (Jeff Hutcheson) walking the downtown Vancouver and presenting shows and venues. And I don’t want to insult anyone (at 40 years plus, myself I became a bit fat and I need more fitness), but it is so embarrassing not to be able to find for such a major SPORTS event some young, good looking and athletic person! Vancouver is full of youth and the fat guy is really a disgrace for the circumstances, it doesn’t matter if he’s a genius in other matters (but he is not).

All thing combined, I’m very so-so about this major event in my city. I am Canadian, I love Canada, I love more than any other city Vancouver, but I really hope no other major malfunction or bad event to strike us in the last week to come. More than anything else, I love our hockey spirit and I really hope we’ll not be embarrassed in our country, in our city, in “our” Olympics. We came so close, because one hour ago I watched Canada with the Swiss. And I did not like at all what I saw.

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