Canuckleheads

Well, that didn't go as planned...

Vancouver lost doubly last night – at the hands of a well-oiled Boston Bruins machine and to hooligans who ran roughshod over the City of Glass' downtown. The Vancouver Sun's Dean Broughton recounts his experience in the midst of the riot in a must-read essay, wondering if “we are not only a city of losers on the ice, but off the ice as well.” The hordes of young men breaking glass, burning cars, and fighting one another “weren't hardened criminals raised on poverty, but rather booze-fueled suburban youth who gulp their courage from a bottle” and have now brought shame to a city so used to being the envy of the rest of the world.

The Boston Globe's criminal behaviour blogger, James Alan Fox, looks back at what Vancouver police officials said before the game, assuring him that there would be no rehash of the 1994 riots. A spokeswoman told Fox that the city had matured in the intervening years, pointing to the jubilant and property-damage-free celebrations during the 2010 Winter Olympics as proof. “She rejected my suggestion that the way in which a city identifies with its local sports team, especially on the rare occasions that it competes for a championship, is fundamentally different than how a multinational crowd reacts to a wide array of competitions held every four years,” says Fox. “Maybe I was misreading the official posturing, but it surely reminded me of the arrogance displayed by some of the Vancouver hockey players. The Canucks were too good to lose, and the fans too civilized to misbehave.” Salt in the wound much?

At least there are lessons that can be learned from the destruction, suggests Kelly McParland in the National Post. Chief among them is that “anyone who thinks such violence is anything but a deliberate criminal act should quit kidding themselves. What took place in Vancouver was deliberate and premeditated,” and should force Vancouver police to review just how badly they underestimated what would happen after the game. McParland also takes the opportunity to suggest that major cities should consider banning large-scale gatherings until they can figure out a way to prevent such mob mentality from taking over, which is, in our view, a bit of an extreme step to take. His recommendation of pursuing any and all culpable in the riots to the harshest extent of the law ought to serve as a much better deterrent.