Flaming Canada's Olympics

The media can trash Vancouver as the 'worst Olympic games ever' if they must – but criticising us for being un-Canadian?
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Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games - Day 6
Organisers have moved the chain-link fence closer to the Olympic cauldron following complaints about poor public access. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty

Vancouver has always been home to a robust contingent of people who love to trash the city. In the last few years, every time a news story reported Vancouver yet again being named the world's most liveable city, these people grumbled into action. It's not so great, they'd say. Don't believe all that hype about the beautiful scenery, cultural diversity, thriving downtown and cool people.

It's not a real city, they'd point out, just an amateur little town. The transit system is skeletal, the nightlife a combination of yahoo-ish and tedious, the architecture monotonous, the whole city's collective attitude an off-putting blend of self-satisfaction and ignorance. And, they'd go on, how can Vancouver be so wonderful if it has a neighbourhood such as the Downtown Eastside in the heart of the city, where hundreds of people, many of them mentally ill, sleep on the streets?

But those critics have been stunned into silence in the last few days, while the media express picks up steam on the narrative of "Vancouver – worst Olympics ever" (7,820 references on Google as I write, but likely higher by the time you read this). They, as much as the most boosterish of Vancouver fans, have been shocked at the experience of being on the negative end of a bonfire of the vanities-style media frenzy, something they never anticipated in the years of doomsaying predictions about the games.

Many of us were ambivalent about the games. Both polls and dinner party conversations showed in recent weeks that people here liked the athletes, but were cynical about the IOC occupying force running the city and dubious about the happy talk from Olympics officials and politicians about how the games would make our lives infinitely richer. We were prepared to see visiting reporters hone in on the city's homelessness crisis or its epidemic of gang violence, perhaps even see them criticise the province's decision to spend billions to host the Olympics instead of concentrating on the problems on its doorstep.

But no one expected the weird coverage we're getting, which has focused instead on broken-down ice machines, the 'too-warm' weather, malfunctioning buses, a chain-link fence around the Olympic flame, some marketing genius's "Own the Podium" campaign, and other earth-shaking events that apparently add up to Worst Games Ever.

As one woman shopping at my local grocery store was overheard saying: "Worst games ever? Hello? Munich, anyone?" I admit it's pathetic when you justify your city's performance by pointing out that you haven't had a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 11 athletes.

But we are a little pathetic and vulnerable right now, like the girl who was always been the prettiest in her small home town, then gets flayed alive when she goes to the big city. And having the flaying come from the mother country really pushes our buttons. (I'll spare you the nasty things being said about Brits these days. Oh, if you insist: failed-empire fanatics taking it out on their former colony; losers whom a recent poll said only wash their bedsheets three times a year; wankers just trying to deflect negative coverage about London's impending Olympics debacle.)

However, it's equally pathetic when international reporters add two plus two plus two and come out with, not six, but "nuclear disaster". I'm a reporter. I get that if there's something journalists love, it's a story that goes against a current stereotype. It would have been too predictable to say that Canadians are kind and polite, and Vancouver is beautiful. How cool instead to say Canadians are really arrogant jerks or that Vancouver is the equivalent of a dumb blonde – pretty but ditzy and disorganised.

But that counterintuitive story should have something be based on more than a couple of toothpicks of evidence. Ok, take a run at the IOC and Vancouver Organising Committee. No one here will mind too much. Those aliens who have been running our city are the ones who put up the silly fence around the Olympic flame, chose the mountain with no snow, and rented the buses that broke down.

But attacking us for being un-Canadian and not nice? Based on what? I don't know anyone who wasn't shocked and grieved by Nodar Kumaritashvili's death. But critics make it sound like we collectively shrugged it off before heading to the bar for another brewski. If you care to actually look back at the coverage, it was the American head of the International Luge Federation who kicked off the line that the track was perfectly safe and that it was Kumaritashvili's mistake that caused his death.

We get blamed for allowing protesters to derail the torch relay and break windows, but you know what? We give those protesters space to do their thing because we're so damn nice. And as for adopting an aggressive, "own the podium even if I have to kill to get it" attitude – have you listened to our medal-winning athletes? They're so sweet, they make Winnie the Pooh look like a charging grizzly.

One thing that's good about all this, though. It's stopped the local whining. I hardly recognise my own city.

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