by John Furlong
We talked a bit about the demands for more French in the closing. I outlined the logistical realities of changing up the show at this late stage. He knew we weren’t going to be making any big changes. “Do your best,” he said to me. “Whenever there is an opportunity to include the spoken word in French put it in there. Just see what you can do. I know it will be wonderful and you guys will do a terrific job. The country is very proud of you. I’m really looking forward to it.”
I explained that having our partners criticizing us over French content was making life very uncomfortable for a lot of people who were doing their damndest to make the country proud. Morale was suffering. I felt he heard what I was saying.
It was a great conversation, and the prime minister made me feel a whole lot better about the situation. To be honest, throughout the entire Games I thought Stephen Harper was a real leader and brought a great spirit to the Olympics. Just seeing him there cheering madly, living every moment as if he himself were playing, was reassuring. He certainly played his part with class and looked good in red. If he had been distant and unsure about the Games at one time he had morphed into a rabid supporter.
I wasn’t quite finished with James Moore though. After the reception at Quebec House I would have a couple more conversations with him. And I was no less annoyed about the whole controversy.
“James,” I said at one point, “we’re partners, for God’s sake. I mean, I’d never do this to you guys. I’d never get up publicly and say bad things about the federal government. I have never once criticized you guys for anything. I have always been thoughtful and respectful. And who, exactly, is benefiting from all this, James? People from all over the world are looking over our fence and we’re fighting with each other. How does that look? We had the best opening ceremony imaginable and we’re arguing about this and the world is watching.”
And that was pretty much the last time we talked about it. I think the conversation with the prime minister had an effect because shortly thereafter the matter seemed to vaporize. When people approached James Moore looking for a quote he began telling reporters that there was nothing more to say and that the controversy was overblown.
(The only other time French was an issue was after the Games were over. We decided to send MPS, B.C. MLAS, senators and municipal council members from the host communities each a letter with a souvenir volunteer’s Blue Jacket to thank them for their support over the years. I just wanted them to feel appreciated, and we had the inventory so the gesture wasn’t coming at any extra cost. Universally the reaction was heart-felt, with one exception: the Bloc Québécois sent us a letter telling us that if we did not rewrite our letter to their members in French they would return all the jackets to us. The matter got resolved and they kept the jackets, but it was a final shot that didn’t show a lot of class.)
THAT NIGHT, DAVE COBB and I went back to BC Place Stadium to watch Alexandre Bilodeau receive his gold medal. The morning papers had wall-to-wall coverage of his wonderful victory of the night before. The kid had taken a pretty significant monkey off the country’s back and was getting the recognition he deserved for the honour. It seemed every time I looked at a television monitor, no matter where I was, they were replaying Alexandre’s fabulous run that cinched first place. Displays of patriotism were breaking out all over the place. Delighted fans were soaking it up.
After it was over, Dave and I decided to take another walk outside and see what it was like on the streets. It was even wilder than it had been the night before. We made our way slowly along Robson Street, one of the streets that bisects the downtown core. A part of it had been closed to traffic and had subsequently become a non-stop party zone. Our own Red Square. Most days you could barely move on the street and on those around it. And it was no different on this Monday night. I was surprised by the number of people who seemed to know who I was. But people were coming up again and again and asking to get their pictures taken with me. Being treated like a celebrity in such a genuine way was touching, but I must admit it also felt awkward and embarrassing for someone as naturally shy and introverted as I am.
That said, to feel such positive energy from people was uplifting. Dave and I revelled in that walk, laughing and joking with perfect strangers. It was such a refreshing contrast to the negativity that I had been dealing with over the last few days. It was almost as if there were two worlds: the one inside the media bubble that was pretty grim, even hostile, and this other one, the one in the streets and at the venues that was completely different. People there were happy and having a great time, seemingly unaware of all the so-called controversies and brush fires that were flaring up all over the place.
Another fact that confirmed my two-worlds theory was the number of Canadians who had tuned in to watch Jenn Heil’s medal ceremony the night before: about 8 million, give or take a few thousand. That was a stunning number, and the first time I remember thinking that the country was riveted by what was going on. They were tuning in the action and tuning out all the background noise about cauldrons and problems with buses, among other things.
I remember turning the corner to go down one street on that Monday night where the crowd was particularly dense and boisterous. A number of police officers were there. Dave and I stood back to see how the police were handling what was potentially a dicey situation. But they didn’t have to worry. People were in such a great mood, and so were the officers. The fans were high-fiving the cops, shaking their hands, giving them hugs. People were getting their pictures taken with them. These were the same streets where in 1994 hundreds of people rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost out in the Stanley Cup finals to the New York Rangers. The Olympic crowd couldn’t have been more different. It was reaffirming to see. And no one seemed to mind that it was raining, though not nearly as hard as the night before.
If the streets of Vancouver and Whistler seemed like global gathering places full of delirious energy, the biggest Cultural Olympiad ever mounted deserved credit for fuelling much of the jubilation. The Cultural team led by Burke Taylor had magically woven together a pan-Canadian showcase of the best talent the country had to offer—on a shoestring budget. Over 2 million people attended events ranging from theatre and dance to music and film that highlighted the rich cultural diversity of Canada.
Performers also came from around the world, led by the Russians and the British, who arrived to give us a taste of what was to come at their Games. For Aboriginal Canada the Cultural Olympiad was a coming-out party. There was something for everyone and every facility that looked remotely like a staging area was used, and all were filled to bursting every night. Unique pavilions were erected to showcase Canada’s many regions, and we cannot forget the 22,000 that crammed into the stadium every night to watch medals presentations and attend concerts.
BY TUESDAY OF that first week, the French controversy seemed to be behind us. But we had developed a problem with an Olympia ice-cleaning machine at the Richmond Oval and were having to truck a Zamboni—Olympia’s rival—in from Calgary. We knew the media were going to have fun with that at our expense. We would also have to cancel more standing room tickets for Cypress—20,000 in fact. We hated to do it, of course, but the weather threatened to make the area where the spectators were to stand unstable. The last thing we needed was a serious injury. Combined with the 8,000 tickets previously cancelled a total of 28,000 tickets had to be refunded.
As I say, we felt horrible about it. But that is the nature of the Olympics, especially ones held in winter, when the weather can always wreak havoc. At the Calgary Games in 1988, 130,000 tickets had to be cancelled due to high winds. In Nagano 10 years later, 59,000 tickets had to be refunded because of rain and fog. One event had to take place with no spectators. So this sort of stuff was known to happen. It just seemed that given everything else that was going on, the ticket cancellations were being given bigger play than the story might have otherwise deserved.
Contrary to what the media were saying, I felt that we were qu
ietly building some momentum. Many of the problems that had plagued us at the start were either solved or being addressed. Even though I refused to believe it, we were being told that good weather was on the way. What a break that would be. No place is as beautiful as Vancouver under sunny skies. And what wouldn’t a little sunshine do to people’s attitudes and dispositions? So, I definitely felt that by Tuesday we had turned a bit of a corner, even if the media, especially the British press, didn’t want to. That was their problem.
I was stunned by the number of people who were e-mailing and texting me. Complete strangers. I had no idea how they even dug up my e-mail address, but somehow they did and they all seemed to want to tell me what a wonderful time they were having. They were people from all over the world. Some came from the United States. There were lots of Irish well-wishers, a few Aussies and even a bunch from England—decent folk angry as hell with their own press.
If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times: thanks for making us feel so welcome and giving us such a truly wonderful experience, the e-mails said. But the majority of the notes came from Canadians who wanted to tell me that they had never felt more proud of their country. These were rank-and-file Canucks who badly wanted us to succeed, who were in their living rooms, or roaming the streets of Vancouver, who were cheering for us, in some cases loudly, in other cases quietly, but cheering us on and giving us their unqualified support.
Still, it was going to be important now to make sure we stayed on top of any potential issues and addressed them before they became something to write about. That was my message each day to my executive: Maintain a keen focus. Take nothing for granted. Let’s look two and three days down the road and be dead certain we’re not missing anything in terms of potential new land mines. If we felt there was going to be greater pressure on the transportation system on a certain day, we’d put more buses on the road. Cost aside, it would be far better to have too many of them than too few. It didn’t matter how small an issue was, if it had the potential to bite us we had to deal with it. Service levels had to be maintained, so if we heard about some grumbling by volunteers about the lack of food at a particular venue we were all over it. The last thing we wanted was a bunch of Blue Jackets leaving us or losing their spirit.
For me, there were few things as important on my to-do list as getting out to as many venues as possible and thanking as many of our 25,000 volunteers as possible. You could have the best executive team in the world, the finest infrastructure, the most bulletproof plans, but if you didn’t have a happy volunteer force you had problems.
I remember during the planning process having serious discussions about volunteers and exactly how many we were going to need. There were those who believed we were going to need far more than we ended up settling on because we had to factor in an attrition rate of 20 to 30 per cent. I found these predictions annoying. It was felt that a number of people would find the work too taxing, too unpleasant, especially if the weather was lousy, and they would pack it in after a while. After all, some of the jobs were menial and away from the limelight. Probably some would say, no thanks, I’m out of here. And many might not even give notice. They just wouldn’t show up one day and you would be scrambling to find a replacement.
I refused to believe that we’d lose that many. I thought we’d have to be doing a pretty lousy job as an organizing committee to have that many people desert us. But a few of my colleagues insisted that it happened at every Games. It happened in Turin. It happened in Athens and Salt Lake. It happened at Games before those. I would say: we’re not them. Canadians don’t do that sort of thing. When they take on a job they stick with it until it’s finished. It’s not in our DNA to leave a task unfinished or to just walk out on somebody for no good reason. That is not the spirit on which this country was built, the spirit that allowed us to persevere and battle an often inhospitable climate. Canadians are better than that.
I was also of the view that to be Canadian was to give—I’d certainly seen enough evidence in my time in Canada to believe that was true. Once or twice in frustration I asked my colleagues how they would feel if we recruited substitutes in the event one of them didn’t show up to work. They’d be insulted. A volunteer is as reliable as anyone else in my book.
I did think, however, that we were going to need to look at volunteers a little differently than others perhaps had in the past and take great care of them. I thought we needed to regard the volunteer who was working in a parkade somewhere as someone who was absolutely crucial to the success of the Games—and we needed to communicate that to him or her. We needed to communicate to them all just how important the work they were doing was. They needed to be treated like family. And we needed to constantly thank them for it and look after them and make sure they were being fed properly. That was our obligation to them.
I was going to try and do my part by hopping out of my car whenever I could to go up to any Blue Jacket I saw, to thank them for the wonderful sacrifice they were making in the name of their country. And it’s with the greatest amount of humility that I say that all the volunteers I talked to seemed delighted when I approached them to say thanks and give them a hug or a pat on the back. They were happy to be so openly respected and appreciated. I remember going up to Cypress Mountain or out to the Callaghan Valley where the cross-country ski races and the ski jumping were taking place, and some days it was pretty darn cold with biting rain coming down, and there would be the Blue Jackets, braving it all, with smiles on their faces. If I have one regret it’s that I missed some people during my rounds.
There was occasional grousing by the odd Blue Jacket about the lack or quality of food at some of the venues. When that happened, it was our problem and we fixed it. We did lose a few when all was said and done, but the numbers were minuscule. They were loyal to the Games and each other.
By late Tuesday, I had talked to enough volunteers to know that while they were doing their jobs and were mostly happy, there was a bit of resentment about the way the Games were being perceived by the international media in particular and about how even though so much was going right, the local media seemed preoccupied with what the foreign media, and especially the British press, was saying about us. I could tell this criticism was threatening to undermine morale.
Although I was not sure what exactly to do about it, I decided that night that I wasn’t going to let it go on any longer without some sort of action. I needed to address what these reporters were saying, to take them on and challenge some of these British organizations to defend the stories they were publishing. I wanted people throughout our organization—all 50,000 of them—to see the optimism that I was feeling about the way the Games were going. They were waiting for us to fight back.
By this point, the Guardian had published a story suggesting our Games were a candidate to be “the worst ever held in Olympic history.” Another British paper called them the “Calamity Games.” The Daily Mail said we could now put our “Maple Leaf stamp on something more instantly tangible: the nondescript little box carrying the lifeless body of Nodar Kumaritashvili back to his home in Bakuriani, Georgia.” People were writing this stuff, and other news organizations were printing it and validating it and shipping it all over the world, and the entire planet was talking about it.
It was suggested that some of these writers were taking vicarious shots at London 2012—a form of early target practice. The head of the London Olympic bid, Sebastian Coe, incensed at the British press, waded in more than once with rave reviews about the Vancouver experience, noting how London organizers would have their work cut out trying to match the celebratory atmosphere that had taken over the city. He said he was reading stories that bore no resemblance to what was actually happening. I obviously couldn’t have agreed more.
The daily news conference was scheduled for 11:00 AM each morning in the imposing Gabriola conference room on the second floor of the Main Press Centre, a room decked out in the beautiful west coast look of the Games. I think th
at first Tuesday morning was the worst for Renee Smith-Valade, as reporters were still all over us for the cauldron-viewing situation, for which we were trying to secure a remedy. Unfortunately, Renee was not in a position at that point to announce the solution we were closing in on. So she had to sit there and absorb the punishment. I even had reporters who were there come up to me later and say they felt badly for her because of the abuse she took. It wasn’t that reporters were being rude or personal. It was just that the questions were unrelenting, like being in a boxing ring and trying to bob and weave and duck the incoming blows knowing you were going to get tagged a few times.
So between the Tuesday news conference and the feeling I was picking up from my own executive team and the volunteers that somebody needed to stick up for the organization, I decided to make a surprise appearance at the regularly scheduled session on Wednesday morning.
Renee was aware that I was going to depart from our established protocol and was going to take the British media head-on. Normally, I was careful about what I said and what I didn’t say. I hate the term “message box” but I was fairly good at staying within the parameters of whatever it was I was supposed to be talking about on any given day. I never took a reporter for granted and let my guard down much.
Renee knew she could count on me not to blurt out something that was going to create more problems for us. She also knew that I was going to speak the truth, or at least what I saw as the truth. If I didn’t stand up for our organization who would? And I knew that there were members of the local media who also felt we weren’t being treated fairly by the Brits. They shrugged it off as the way the British media worked: they yellowed things up, torqued up the most mundane events, to sell newspapers. It was a tried and true formula that British media had been using for years. Bottom-feeding, gutter talk, as my dad would say. Why would anyone expect them to make an exception with us?