The Paralympic Games have thus far been treated with disrespect by everyone except the Vancouver public, who have embraced them with open arms.
We are on the verge of hosting the second largest multi-sport festival on earth and about to bare witness to strength, determination and courage the likes of which our region has rarely experienced. Yet it is a number of high-profile snubs rather than the celebrations that have left an indelible mark on me as an observer.
My appearance has been postponed for the time being because as I have been told by the field producer that called me, they want to do a little more checking on where responsibility for the mishap lies.
Fair enough…by all means do your due dilligence. But unlike Mike Howell from the Vancouver Courier, who tiptoed around the issue of blame attribution in his story, I will not.
Readers can once again carefully review my post detailing the chronology of initiatives, guidelines, motions and reports having to do with accessibility and inclusion, and all of which can be directly connected to former Mayor Sam Sullivan’s leadership, or lack thereof.
I certainly hope that CBC isn’t backing away from the story because of another reporter.
As I have been told, there is going to be some kind of follow-up once more comments and information become available. Let’s see.
Tomorrow, I will cover another national disgrace when it comes to the Paralympic Games and our official Games broadcaster CTV.
CivicScene will be on CBC Radio this afternoon.
I will be appearing on CBC Radio’s “On The Coast” program at 5:20pm PST today to discuss the Olympic Village inaccessibility controversy. CBC is 690 on the AM dial and 88.1 on FM.
On a more sombre note, I want to wish my long-time friend Councillor Geoff Meggs a speedy recovery after a brutal accident yesterday morning. My family is thinking of you and hope you will be back to your usual frantic pace in short order.
Paralympic Ambassador Sam Sullivan has a very short memory about his own record in office.
Today’s Vancouver Courier arrived on my doorstep with the following front page headline:
In consideration of the efforts of Sullivan to make Vancouver the most accessible jurisdiction in the world in advance of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, this is most definitely a scandal.
The problem for the current Paralympic Ambassador and former Mayor, however, is that responsibility for the scandal rests solely on his shoulders.
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An article titled Vancouver Politics by Paul Tennant in The Vancouver Book (1976), describes the entry of TEAM onto the civic political scene in 1968. TEAM, wrote Tennant, “sought to be a moderate reform group appealing to persons of all political ideologies.”
On their left was COPE (the Committee of Progressive Electors), also formed in 1968, and on their right was the NPA (the Non-Partisan Association), which had been a power in city politics for nearly four decades, and which “held that the affairs of the city should be run by those with the necessary knowledge and experience, i.e., those with a professional-managerial background, in order to run the city in a business-like way.”
The reformers, on the other hand, “felt that civic decision-making should be open to the public, with leadership coming from a cross-section of the population, and rule going to the working class majority. This group was concerned about land use, they advocated city control, and preferred to structure politics around the neighborhood concept.”
“It was very diverse, and we got together by word of mouth. There were professors, business people, labor, lawyers and from all across the city. It was a coalescing of people around the idea we should do something.” – former City Councillor Setty Pendakur on the formation Vancouver’s reform movement and its political manifestation – TEAM – came into being in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
