I went to see this film with no idea of what to expect, and it was only a coincidence that I went the day after Betty Krawczyk, a 78-year-old opponent of the Eagleridge Bluffs highway project, was sentenced to ten months in jail.

Krawczyk gets a lot of coverage in this film, as does Harriet Nahanee, a 71-year-old who died of pneumonia a month after serving a 14 day sentence for the same protest activity.

It would be a mistake to think that this film is about septuagenarians who stand in front of bulldozers, however. Burnaby Mayor (and former Chair of B.C. Transit) Derek Corrigan gets a lot of time in front of the camera, and my opinion of him has gone up as a result of seeing this film. There are also interviews with several other Vancouver-area mayors, including Pamela Goldsmith-Jones of West Vancouver, one of the most affluent municipalities in North America. Another person with a lot to say in this film is Sara MacIntyre of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an organization that normally takes the “what's good for business is good for business” attitude. Other interviewees include Chris Shaw, a fairly level-headed and long-term opponent of the 2010 Games, and lawyer David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society, who I interviewed for a recent article on this site, Another promise broken.

Last week's news was another Olympic unveiling ceremony (a clock to count the time until the opening in 2010) accompanied by a not-very-polite protest by Vancouver's anti-poverty community.

These protests aren't going away, and there are good reasons why. During the same week, there was also a story in the local media about the Golden Crown Hotel in the 100 block of West Hastings Street. I'm familiar with this establishment. Not as a guest or a resident; when I moved to Vancouver 25 years ago, there was a very good Chinese restaurant on the premises. That restaurant is long gone. Like many old Vancouver hotels, it is occupied by long-term, low-income tenants. The owner, Daniel Jun (a.ka. #627017 BC Ltd.), has issued eviction notices to these tenants, effective the end of March. His plan is to renovate the place, then rent the rooms out, at somewhat higher rates, to construction workers that are coming to town for Olympics-related work.

The Nov. 9 issue of the Georgia Straight, a Vancouver weekly, contained an article by former radio talk show host David Berner with the title, "Who is Mr. Olympic Oval?"

I would love to give you a link to this article, but for unknown reasons, it doesn't appear on the Georgia Straight's site. However, Stephen Rees, an urban planner and a blogger, has put up some key excerpts from the article, along with some urban planning-oriented commentary. Here's where you can find it: Who is Mr Olympic Oval?

Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer nailed it. See Olympic costs report roasts B.C. Liberals, his column for September 15.

You can read the actual report here. It's a PDF, and 72 pages, but for a report of this nature, it's pretty readable.

One aspect that needs a lot more attention is the security cost. The estimate in the Vancouver bid was $175 million. The Auditor General's comment is very cautious; he just said that this amount was "not updated".

Here's a classic example of why this site exists, and why you should have it bookmarked. Better yet, subscribe to the RSS (or syndication) feed.

Vivian Smith was a columnist for the Victoria Times-Colonist. She was fired last week. The story is, she wrote a column which encouraged tourists to explore Victoria's many free or low-cost attractions rather than the highly-advertised tourist traps. The Times-Colonist's publisher, Bob McKenzie, quickly got a visit from the operators of these tourist traps, and Vivian Smith was quickly fired.

This is exactly the sort of thing we're talking about on the About this site page. If you want to read about what's really going on here, look for non-mainstream sources.

You can read more about the Vivian Smith incident at Public Eye Online, by Sean Holman. And thanks to Ross K. of The Gazetteer for alerting us to this story.

Update on July 27: Vivian Smith was re-hired by the Times-Colonist. Story from The Tyee: Veteran Journalist Fired, Rehired by Times Colonist.

At the same time that millions of provincial and federal tax dollars are being spent to build new facilities for the 2010 Olympics (including a biathlon course), another level of government has voted to shut down one of the few facilities available in the Lower Mainland for target shooting.

This time, it's the Pacific Shooters Association in North Vancouver, and it's relevant to 2010 because it's used by Canada's biathletes. (In case you're not plugged into the sport of biathlon, it's cross-country skiing and rifle target shooting. It may seem silly at first glace, but it's a sport that originated with the Vikings, using bows and arrows instead of rifles.)

This decision was made by the Greater Vancouver Water District, a division of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The Pacific Shooters Association uses property leased from the GVRD, and the GVWD decided not the renew the lease. The reasons given were environment and noise, but the three North Shore mayors on the commission voted against the closure.

After this closure takes place in 2008, the only remaining target shooting facility in the Vancouver area will be the one at Burke Mountain, north of Port Coquitlam.

Story from the North Shore News: GVWD shoots down PSA target range. There was a story on this in the July 5 Province, but it's subscriber-only.

The arrests were made, and the bulldozers are moving. It doesn't change the fact that building this stretch of highway overland instead of through a tunnel was a bad idea. Kevin Potvin, publisher of a local bi-weekly, The Republic, has come up with a good analysis of the situation, and a solution: Oops, they did it again. Excerpt: "The overland route through Eagleridge Bluffs is the wrong plan for improving access to Whistler from Vancouver in time for the Olympics regardless of the fact that it’s surrounded by residents of the richest postal code in the country. The inconsequential fact about how this is rich people’s backyards has gotten much more play in the press than any other fact surrounding the issue, including the more salient fact that the Bluffs, though relatively unknown among the Lower Mainland’s many natural-beauty-endowed amenities, is a jewel."

A news story came out on June 14 (Olympics turn $12m eye on weather, from The Province) that revealed that $12 million is going to be spent between now and 2010 to improve weather prediction in the Sea-to-Sky corridor. $9 million of this is coming from the Federal government, at the other $3 million is coming from the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee.

When curling became an Olympic sport a few years ago, there was snickering from both fans and non-fans of this sport. (Substitute "game" for "sport" if you're one of those people who doesn't consider golf a sport, either.) Let's put it this way: when all the Olympic participants get together in the Olympic Village, nobody is going to mistake a curler for a figure skater or cross-country skier.

As things have turned out, however, this is a case where the International Olympic Committee did the right thing. Curling is an activity which has far more competitors than ski jumping, bobsledding, and freestyle skiing (just to name a few) and the competition starts at the grassroots level. It's a small-town friends and neighbours thing, and most competition is amateur. I'm arguing here that having curling in the Olympics is good because it makes them accessible to middle-age beer-drinking types.

Parade Magazine has posted their annual list of the top 10 worst dictators in the world, a list that most world leaders would probably not like to be on, and coming in behind Kim Jong Il and Robert Mugabe (among others) is a name some western folks may not recognize.

That name is Hu Jintao.

Jintao is the leader of the People's Republic of China, and here's what Parade has to say about his leadership style:

Although some Chinese have taken advantage of economic liberalization to become rich, up to 150 million Chinese live on $1 a day or less in this nation with no minimum wage. Between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in "reeducation-through-labor" camps without trial. Less than 5% of criminal trials include witnesses, and the conviction rate is 99.7%. There are no privately owned TV or radio stations. The government opens and censors mail and monitors phone calls, faxes, e-mails and text messages. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, at least 400,000 residents of Beijing have been forcibly evicted from their homes.