Sean Bickerton

Click on the image below for a photo essay of Vancouver as a Olympic Village:

Robson Square in Vancouver, BC

Four years ago, Tom and I were still living in New York, and we watched in amazement as the Mayor we had been reading about in the New York Times rolled up onto the stage in Turino, Italy and accepted the Olympic flag on behalf of all Vancouver. Watching Mayor Sullivan parade that flag across that Olympic stage for the City of Vancouver made us so proud of my hometown city. It literally brought tears of joy to my eyes.

It was a great moment for Vancouver, and he became an instant international icon of a progressive city where anything was possible. So it will be with great pride that we watch this morning as he carries the torch in Vancouver as that great symbol of peaceful international competition makes its final journey to the torch-lighting ceremony tonight.

As with all human endeavour, there are things to criticize. With something this big, it would be impossible to avoid in fact.

But now that the Opening Ceremonies are upon us this evening, it is time for all Vancouverites that love their city and all Canadians to cheer our athletes and give our enthusiasm and support for the most peaceful, successful games in the history of the Olympics. Here’s to Owning the Podium!

Go Canada! Go!

Waiting with Sam Sullivan before he carries the Olympic Torch (Photo: Tom Hudock)

The lighting of Sam's torch - one Olympic runner to the next! (Photo: Tom Hudock)

Sam carrying the torch down 1st @ Commercial Drive (Photo Credit: Tom Hudock)

We took a walk around the False Creek Seawall on Saturday, eager to see the now-completed Athlete’s Village and how they’ve fixed everything up along the seawall to welcome the world.

But the condition of the seawall in North East False Creek hasn’t improved. It’s still a small strip of dilapidated asphalt bordered by sections of rusty chain link fence at each end, and there is a lot of litter along the way.

Instead of the new landscaping we expected to see, Concord has sprayed a soylent green all over the bordering dirt and grass. God only knows what it’s leaching into False Creek. That plastic spray-lawn may be green in colour, but it’s anything but a green welcome to the world’s athletes and media.

Soylent Green?

(More photographs available here.)

Concord has had twenty years to complete that section of the seawall, yet it still isn’t finished. It’s very narrow compared to the rest of the wall, and there’s no separate bike lane despite repeated requests. The large crowds spread across the entire width of the walkway are clearly frustrating the cyclists that usually tear past.

Is this really the best we can do to welcome the world to our city? Is this the best we can do for the residents who live in this community? It’s not that Concord has done nothing. They have. They took away everything in their storage yard adjacent to BC Place referred to by many as an industrial junkyard. It was removed at taxpayer expense, mind you, and they’ve vowed to bring it all back again after the Olympics are gone, but still, they did do that.

And they’ve sprayed seawall borders with that green, lawn-like substance, and put up large, bright, colourful banners advertising condo towers on the very site they promised to develop into Creekside Park. They’ve also done that.

Condos Instead of Creekside Park. What kind of Vision is that?

But the rest of the city looks great. It’s a shame that this is the section of seawall the world’s athletes, their families and media have to walk past every day.

I’m pleased to announce Vancouver 2050: A Creative City! – a public Arts & Culture Forum moderated by Max Wyman and featuring addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony, and Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, with one additional speaker remaining to be confirmed.

Originally announced for January 30, the forum will take place instead on Saturday, April 24 at the Arts Club Revue Stage on Granville Island from 8:30 am to 1:00 pm.

Our three distinguished arts leaders will each present their vision of what Vancouver as a Creative Capital would look like in 2050, with a view to infrastructure, sustainability and the kind of innovation and enrichment of activities that could energize broader community engagement.

After those presentations, a high-level panel drawn from the arts, business and social profit sectors will discuss with the speakers the concepts they’ve presented, and then open the discussion up to include invited arts, business & community leaders and members of the public.

Our goal with this discussion is to bring leaders from the arts and business communities together in order to fully imagine Vancouver as a 21st-century Creative City with a correspondingly vibrant creative economy.

I wish to express my appreciation to David Lemon, Executive & Artistic Director, Health Arts Society, Howard Jang, Executive Director, Arts Club Theatre and Paul Sontz, Manager, Tickets Tonight, for serving with me as the organizing committee for this event.

I am totally and completely a product of the arts institutions of this city and Province. I grew up in rural south Surrey in the 60s, but traveled each week into Vancouver by Greyhound bus for violin lessons and rehearsals of the Vancouver Youth Orchestra. Summers I spent up at Courtenay Youth Music Camp. Later I played violin in the Victoria Symphony, worked as a summer intern for the Vancouver Recital Society, worked in the Vancouver Symphony subscription sales room and managed the Vancouver Youth Orchestra.

That broad-based arts experience made it possible for me to go to work for Columbia Artists in New York, first as an Assistant and eventually as Vice President, managing careers and producing tours for dance companies, orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles in Europe, North America and Asia. As a result, my commitment to these arts institutions and to the artists and artisans that make Vancouver such an engine of enlightenment is total.

Please join us on Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 8:30 am in the Arts Club Revue Stage for a glimpse of Vancouver 2050: A Creative City!

I’m excited to be leaving Thursday for NYC to speak at a forum at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York on Saturday. The forum is part of an International Global Cultural Exchange co-sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The program seeks to provide professional development opportunities to emerging performing artists, managers and presenters between the ages of 19-30 from developing countries, in this case seven performing arts presenters from Russia, Palestine, Syria and Pakistan. They will be in New York to meeting with arts professionals from January 6 – 20, 2010.

The overall goal of the Cultural Visitors program is to energize the work of emerging international artists, presenters and managers in their own countries by bringing them to the United States and providing them with:

After a week in New York, they will go on to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. All of the participants have some background and work experience in the performing arts. They have expressed interest in learning more about best practices of and challenges facing U.S. presenters, development and management of new works and festivals, marketing and promotions initiatives and advocacy.

The arts confer on its initiates a shared language and ethos that transcend national boundaries and any narrow sense of contemporary tribalism. Those lucky enough to participate are imbued from a young age with a respect for other cultures and for new kinds of creativity and expression.

The arts and culture are the ultimate response to the nihilism of militant extremism and extreme militarism. The State Department should be commended for the initiative and urged to undertake more such exchanges, fostering international understanding and worldwide support for peaceful forms of free expression. I’m honoured to be one of many chosen to take part.

My New Years Resolution for 2010 is to try and be more temperate.

I’m passionate about the issues I care deeply about, and while diplomatic by nature, sometimes I get a bit heated in pursuit of those causes, particularly when I feel there is an underdog in need of defense.

I feel I erred in this regard in my recent post – A Potemkin Olympics – (since amended) regarding the contretemps that erupted between VANOC and organizers of the Opening Ceremonies on one side, and the Vancouver Symphony and Vancouvery Youth Symphony on the other. I regret the way I characterized those involved on the Olympics organizing side and the lack of respect I exhibited for the producers of the Opening Ceremonies.

More particularly, I wish to apologize – in Memoriam, as Bob Ransford points out – to Jack Poole, head of VANOC in this regard. I never criticized him, but having criticized the organization he ran so successfully, i feel compelled to also note on the same page that he is universally praised by those I look up to as someone who was one of the great Vancouverites, with highly admirable values and deeply committed to this city.

And to acknowledge, as Rod Mickleburg pointed out recently in The Globe & Mail, that many of the events tarnishing the Olympic image were out of VANOC’s control.

While I disagree with some of the decisions taken by VANOC and the Opening Ceremonies, I wish to state categorically that I do so with full respect for the internationally-celebrated team chosen to showcase our city to the world. We are all looking forward to a unique spectacular that magical day.

I give the organizers of the Olympics and Paralympics, and the producers of the Opening Ceremonies full respect for their extraordinary achievements so far, and my full support for their efforts to bring honour to our city, province and nation next month. We will all be watching with pride. And in the year to come, if ever disagree I must, I will endeavour to disagree more respectfully.

Here are ten heartfelt wishes for our city in 2010:

1. That we host one of the most successful Olympics & Paralympics in history; that credit is shared with everyone that did the heavy lifting to make it happen; and that Canada owns the podium throughout!

1000 in a park

2. That the city recognizes its mistake and restores the decades-old Vancouver minimum standard of 2.75 acres of parkland for every 1000 residents for all new development.

3. That we take simple steps to make Vancouver a more pedestrian-friendly city.

4. That the Mayor releases a comprehensive and credible plan to match his promise to end homelessness in the next five years.

Deteriorating Pantages Theatre

5. That the entire city comes together in order to develop the badly missing infrastructure necessary to sustain the vibrant arts sector of our economy.

6. An end to STIR-type corporate giveaways with no public benefit just to build market-rental housing instead of subsidized or stabilized rentals.

7. The restoration of regular order, courtesy and an atmosphere of respect in City Hall.

8. That the viaducts come down, a thousand parks bloom in their place, and Chinatown is completely revitalized.

9. That the City of Vancouver starts to play its expected role in leading Metro Vancouver  into the future and begins by repairing damaged ties with the UBC Endowment Lands.

10. That the Blue Moon that ushered in 2010 heralds a booming, broad-based economic recovery lifting all boats!

Artwork by Jesse Corcoran

UPDATE 1/2/10:  (Revised)

NEWS UPDATE ADDED 12/21/09 2:01 pm

I’m pleased to report that VANOC has issued a formal apology to Maestro Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for “putting it in an ‘untenable’ position” according to today’s report from The Globe and Mail by David Ebner.

Nonetheless, it remains deeply troubling that our own grammy-award winning orchestra and internationally celebrated Music Director Bramwell Tovey will not be featured during the Opening Ceremonies seen around the world.

We were told the Olympics would showcase our city and province to the entire planet. So why are they missing this opportunity to showcase one of our greatest cultural crown jewels, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra?

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(POSTSCRIPT ADDED BELOW ON 12/21/09 11:01 AM)

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE 12/19/09

Today The Globe and Mail published an article by Marsha Lederman and Rod Mickleburgh entitled The Day The Music Died, which begins:

As the Winter Olympics near, the Games are being hit by defections from the opening and closing ceremonies.

The Grammy-winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and its celebrated conductor Bramwell Tovey walked away from the opening ceremonies this week after being asked to prerecord music that would then be mimed by others during the live, lavish spectacle. Yesterday, Mr. Tovey called the plan fraudulent, likening it to Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s “faux gold medal” at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Mr. Johnson was stripped of his medal when he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. “In our field, for you to plagiarize somebody else’s recording – to mime it and pretend that it’s you – is absolutely on a par with Ben Johnson’s fraud. … It’s non-Olympian in spirit and VANOC really should have known better.”

Mr. Tovey, meanwhile, said VANOC’s plan to have an orchestral segment mimed during the opening ceremonies reminded him of the furor over lip-synching by a young girl at the 2008 Summer Olympics. “I said ‘no’ to VANOC, because I felt it was dishonest. I thought it was fraudulent. It’s promoted with public money, and I didn’t want anything to do with this kind of dishonest practice.” After the Beijing lip-synching controversy, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell vowed there would be no lip-synching during Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

But that was then. Now we learn that instead of setting a new low, the 2008 Olympics set a new Olympic standard for muzzling dissent and the Milli Vanilli-style faux-performance embraced by those producing Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

I was quoted recently in an article in The Georgia Straight called “Vision Vancouver looks after businesses with tax shift” by Carlito Pablo. In regard to the property tax transfer from businesses to residences, I’m quoted as stating:

“I think it’s a very hard thing for politicians to do this. And I believe that it’s a courageous thing they [Vision and NPA councillors] are doing. I praise them for doing it. I know that COPE is unhappy with them going ahead in doing that. But I personally salute their political courage in continuing. It’s not an easy one to support.

(But) to be a healthy economy, we need jobs. If businesses are paying higher taxes here than anyplace else in Canada, that works against creating jobs.”

Just to be clear, I’m in favour of everyone paying a fair share of their income towards taxes to support the very high standard of governance we benefit from in Vancouver and other Canadian cities. But we should do more to foster small-business entrepreneurialism. One way to help would be looking at local commercial retail property taxes and assessments. Another concern is that the HST is going to have a greater effect on our local restaurants, hair salons and other small service businesses just when the recovery seems to be taking hold.

Small businesses generate 60% of all new jobs yet will bear the brunt of the cost. Larger corporations, on the other hand, will save a great deal with HST implementation and they should be prepared to share the pain as well as the benefits with the many small businesses that are going to be hurt by the automatic 7% rise in their own prices and those of their suppliers.

Having stated all of the above, my conversation with the reporter lasted ten minutes and most of that was spent discussing ways the city could eliminate the projected deficit and preserve core programs. So it was great to see that the Straight also published my Letter to the Editor which covers some of those suggestions:

Sean Bickerton
Fri, 2009-12-04 10:15
Letter To The Editor, Georgia Straight

I believe it is possible to continue with the transfer away from small businesses while still maintaining services by cutting the 100 new police officers Mayor Robertson has insisted on hiring at a cost of an extra $12,000,000 annually. As our police force spend 1/3 of their time dealing with mental health issues, why not hire ten social workers at a cost of less than $1 million to have a team on call 24/7 in direct support of the police, freeing them for more urgent priorities.

And, as Peter Ladner suggested, there are $30,000,000 in outstanding fines and bylaw violations, so why not ask the province to stop renewing drivers licenses until all fines are paid, which would eliminate the entire budget gap?

There clearly are other options to cutting our parks, rec centres and libraries, which means these choices are deliberate and I’m terribly disappointed in the choices made