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Visitors from around the world meet Vancouver at Vancouver International, and 2010 Olympic organizers are making a big bid to make sure they are greeted by a strong representation of the 2010 Games.

Vanoc and Vancouver International Airport have just opened their first dedicated Vancouver 2010 store, a 1,300-square-foot boutique located in the international departures area of the facility.

“It’s an ideal market for us, and an ideal place for us to be,” said Caley Denton, Vanoc’s vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing

“People who come to Vancouver look for 2010 merchandise, and if they can get it conveniently at the airport, that’s a great thing for us.

“At the same time, local people who are going abroad and want to take a gift with them, they know they can pick [2010 gear] up at the airport.”

Vanoc expects sales of licensed merchandise to generate $46 million in royalties to support its budget. To earn that revenue will require $500 million in total sales. At the end of April, some $7.8 million were earned in merchandising royalties, according to Vanoc’s latest quarterly report.

Read more - http://www.canada.com

Photo from http://flickr.com/photos/grixti/2069573220/

“Cheaters Beware” was the warning yesterday, as organizers of the 2010 Winter Olympics announced plans for a state-of-the-art, multimillion dollar anti-doping laboratory to be built at one of the Games’ own venues, the signature speed-skating oval in the sprawling suburb of Richmond, B.C.

“You can’t stop people from taking drugs, but if you come to Vancouver, we’re likely to find you,” declared Dick Pound, VANOC board member and the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

“This will be an absolutely first-class effort … Whatever the most modern tests are, they’ll be here.”

The 2010 anti-doping program will be headed by Christiane Ayotte, director of the world-renowned doping control laboratory in Montreal.

VANOC president John Furlong said the organization’s goal is to host “a doping-free Games.”

Housing and equipping the Games’ anti-doping laboratory at the spacious speed-skating oval will more than double the cost to $9.1-million, up from VANOC’s original budget estimate of $4.1-million.

Ayotte said it makes sense to have anti-doping facilities as close to Olympic venues as possible. “If something is weird, then we can collect another sample from the athlete immediately. It’s much more efficient.”

Except for cross-country skiers with a history of blood doping, the Winter Olympics produce fewer dope cheats than the Summer Games.

read more - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and Canada Post today announced that Canada Post has been named an Official Supplier for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. From iconic sports imagery to the beloved Vancouver 2010 mascots - Sumi, Miga, and Quatchi - 2010 Winter Games-themed stamps will grace Canada’s mail starting in December 2008.

As part of the $3 million Official Supplier partnership, Canada Post will supply VANOC with mail delivery services within Canada. In addition, Canada Post - as an authorized user of VANOC trademarks - will design, produce and sell more than half a billion 2010 Winter Games-themed stamps and associated philatelic products, including collectors’ packages and special cancellations. In turn, Canada Post receives sponsorship rights for the Canadian Olympic team for the Beijing 2008, Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Games. Stamps will be issued to celebrate all three Games.
“Canada Post has a natural role to play in delivering images and memories of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games to Canadians and customers around the world. Our partnership gives us an unparalleled opportunity to showcase Canada Post’s strengths as a world-class postal operator,” said Stewart Bacon, Canada Post’s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. “This investment means we will earn significant revenues from commemorative Olympic stamps and other related products, starting with Beijing 2008 stamps, which launch this month.”

read more - http://www.allnationsstampandcoin.com

Whistler will be the centre of activity, but some of the venues will be in Vancouver, Richmond and the cities are cleaning up and getting ready for the 2010 Olympics. This is part of the business district, close to Canada Place; General Motors Place, where a lot of the ice hockey will take place is just east of here and U.B.C., to the west. Towers seem to be going up everywhere in the city and the province seems to be thriving with the prospect of the Olympics coming to the area. The two pro teams, the B.C. Lions ; Vancouver Canucks play at centres nearby. Various forms of transport, including skytrain and the seabus are close. Yaletown, Chinatown and Gastown are within walking distance, as is Stanley Park. Whistler is about 70 K from here.

From http://flickr.com/photos/59492428@N00/326925841/

Life during the 2010 Games won’t quite be business as usual for local residents of host cities, say Vancouver’s Olympic organizers.

From road closures to parking restrictions to security cordons, people living around venues will have to modify their daily lives, but organizers promise they’ll at least still be able to go out and buy a carton of milk.

How they’ll get there, how late the store will be open and whether they’ll have to walk around a security cordon, is anybody’s guess for now.

Residents around Olympic venue sites are learning for the first time a little bit more about what impact the 2010 Games will have on their day-to-day lives.

A series of information sessions being held by Olympic organizers began Tuesday night in Whistler, B.C., and are expected to continue Wednesday with an event near the speed skating oval in Richmond, B.C.

More than 200 people packed the Whistler session to learn more about how the Games will affect the community.

The mountain resort will be home to all the Nordic events for the 2010 Winter Games.

There will be no public parking in Whistler Village during the Games and access to venue sites will be restricted to people with tickets or accreditation from Olympic officials.

People with tickets to events will be also given access to public transit, but details around that program have not been revealed.

BC Transit recently issued a call for proposals from transit management companies to oversee transportation requirements during the Games in the Sea-to-Sky corridor of B.C., which encompasses Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton.

According to the request for proposals, a special transit plan will be in place for the Games, which will involve up to 75 buses plus six mini-buses.

That’s in addition to extra buses being added to the existing fleets that serve Whistler and the other cities.

Getting around will also be made more difficult by the security requirements of the Games, being co-ordinated by the RCMP along with local police forces and the military.

Though barricades will not be placed around public areas, further details on how security will affect road closures or the areas around venues won’t be finalized for some time.

But Cpl. Manon Chouinard of the Integrated Security Unit told the session that as soon as there was information available that would affect the daily lives of residents, they’ll know.

“(Planners) are not leaving one stone unturned in order to be familiar and know what is around those venues and how we can minimize the impact,” she said.

“That is one of the No.1 priorities.”

When it comes to policing, response times will be about the same, Chouinard said, but extra officers will be added to areas like traffic security to help keep the roads moving in case of an accident.

Police officers throughout B.C. will also be pulled from non-security related obligations where possible, like testifying at trials.

The session was the first of 10 organizers are holding over the summer to give people living near venues a snapshot of how their daily lives will look during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Tuesday night’s presentation was good on concept but short on details that many Whistler residents crave, said local businessman John Morrow.

Morrow said he’s attended a number of sessions now with both Olympic organizers and local business groups and is still confused on how exactly the daily grind of the city will be affected.

Business owners, especially those not working in services directly connected to the Games, need more details now, Morrow said.

“They are talking about delivering but they haven’t delivered yet,” he said.

“Until someone can actually say ‘this is what you are going to be given to work with,’ we can’t actually formulate our own business plan.”

From http://canadianpress.google.com

from http://flickr.com/photos/blackbird_hollow/2514647584/

Pivot Legal Society demands action on shelter stats

Vancouver - Pivot Legal Society is demanding that the City of Vancouver place a moratorium on tickets given to people sleeping outside in light of newly released shelter statistics that say homeless individuals, on over 40,000 separate occasions, were refused access to shelters in Metro Vancouver over a nine month period. Over 17,000 of these turn away incidents involved women and families.

“These turnaway statistics are alarming,” said lawyer David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society. “We have bylaw officers, police officers and security guards cracking down on people who sleep outside, but these statistics make it clear that there is nowhere else to sleep.”

The statistics cannot be extrapolated into numbers of homeless individuals, because neither the participating shelters nor B.C. Housing can say whether the same individuals are being turned away from multiple shelters on any given night or whether individuals give up after visiting just one shelter. The statistics on families and women may count families as one person, or may count children as well as parents, making those numbers less certain as well.

“We need a provincial investigation of the real number of people who can’t find shelter,” said Eby. “We’re calling for a moratorium on police and bylaw officers ticketing people who sleep outside until we figure out whether our shelter system has been overwhelmed by demand.”

There are currently 1,028 known shelter beds in Metro Vancouver, according to the document. The GVRD Homelessness Count indicated that there were 2,592 homeless people counted during its biennial 24 hour count in March of 2008.

Pivot Legal Society released two open letters, one to Sam Sullivan - Mayor of the City of Vancouver and Chair of the Police Board - calling for a moratorium on bylaw and Trespass Act tickets given to the homeless, and one to Rich Coleman - B.C.’s Minister responsible for housing - calling for a formal investigation into the capacity of Metro Vancouver’s emergency shelter system.

Source: David Eby’s Official Vancouver 2010 Olympics Newswire

Vancouver residents are getting their first peek at what life in the city will look like during the 2010 Winter Games, but the quick glimpse might not answer many major concerns.

Organizers have announced they’ll hold a series of 10 meetings beginning next week and over the summer in communities around Olympic venues.

“It’s the first step in sharing with the residents who live in communities where there is a Games venue what that experience will be like in terms of their work, their play, their day-to-day life and also give them a sense of what’s going to happen when,” said Renee Smith-Valade, vice-president of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, known as VANOC.

The sessions, which follow private conversations organizers have had with city officials and community boards, will address such topics as what time venues will open and close, what sorts of infrastructure will be built around them to support Games activities and what events will be taking place inside.

Vancouver organizers will return twice more to the 10 affected communities, once next spring and again next fall.

With the meetings beginning next week, VANOC will run ads and keep the information on their website current so people can plan to attend, Smith-Valade said.

Keith Jacobson, president of the Killarney Community Centre Society, said this month’s meeting is the first time his community-at-large has heard from VANOC and he was unaware until Tuesday afternoon that the meeting had been set for next month.

The east-end neighbourhood is home to a training venue for short-track speed skating, and the rink abuts a community centre that’s home to dozens of programs from day care to fitness classes.

What concerns him most, Jacobson said, is how security measures for the Games are going to restrict community activities.

“It’s a community centre and the Olympics are supposed to be a community event and if you close down the swimming pool, what’s the community going to think?” he said, adding that for services like day care, provision is needed year-round.

“You have to be respectful of the community during the Olympics. I understand security, I understand the threat of terrorism but you also have to keep in mind the community.”

Smith-Valade said specific information on security is still some months away.

“We’re not ready at a detailed level yet,” she said.

“Our goal is by fall of 2009, they will have a very clear sense of all of the information they will need to plan their daily lives during the Games but the information will come out in degrees and in stages.”

Clay Yandle, who lives near the curling venue in Vancouver, said he’s opposed to the Games but it’s the right thing for organizers to be reaching out to the community.

He said given that there’s still over a year left to go until the Olympics, he understands why organizers are only coming to his backyard now, but he feels the lines of communication should have been opened sooner.

He said the full implication of having the Games in people’s own backyard extends beyond the days of athletic competition.

“It’s going to be almost two months when it is said and done because there has to be some sort of giant security sweep that’s done well in advance of opening day and all that,” said Yandle, who also sits on the board of the Riley Park Community Centre.

“That’s something that I don’t think people realize.”

During the Games itself, he said, he and many of his neighbours plan to leave town.

Yandle said residents of Riley Park are more excited about the fact that after the Games, the curling venue will be turned into a community centre, though funding for that hasn’t yet been approved.

Tammie Tupechka heads a community group fighting against the Olympics’ use of an east-end ice rink called Britannia as another training venue, in part because of security concerns and because of the potential for service disruptions.

She said community consultation should move beyond the venue communities and into the community at large.

She pointed out that over this past winter, both Riley Park and Killarney rinks were closed for pre-Olympic touch-ups, leaving Britannia the only rink serving a wide population.

If it becomes a Games venue too, she said, where are communities supposed to work and play together during the Games?

Tupechka said Vancouver organizers have continually made promises that the community will be involved in the execution of the Games.

“VANOC wants to get whatever it needs done and I don’t think it really cares,” she said.

“They want to put the Olympics on, they want it to be a certain way and that’s the way it is. There is no connection with the community, with any community.”

From http://victoriastar.canadaeast.com/article/322047

Outside the Downtown Eastside Residents Association office on Hastings Street East in Vancouver, Canada.

Come to Grandview Park on Commercial Drive on Saturday, May 24th from Noon to 1pm to support a social legacy for the 2010 Olympics:

1) Support the development of 3,200 social housing units rather than a new roof for BC Place
2) Support legislative changes that would protect renters
3) Support the UN Human Rights Complaints Against Canada related to SRO Housing Conversions www.noplacelikehomevancouver.org
4) Support a $1 Homelessness Levy on Olympic Tickets and Merchandising to be matched by the Provincial and Federal Governments.

From http://flickr.com/photos/blackbird_hollow/2503580669/

Games enlists shoppers to help trace fake 2010 Olympic tickets. Secret shoppers on the prowl for illicit tickets will be part of a consumer protection campaign being launched next week by Vancouver Olympic organizers.

The Real 2010 campaign, aimed at building consumer awareness about the importance of authentic Games merchandise and tickets, kicks off with advertisements and coincides with an anti-counterfeiting conference in Vancouver.

Trade in counterfeit merchandise is illegal and puts consumers at risk, as fakes are not made according to the same safety, quality and sustainability standards as official goods, the Vancouver Organizing Committee said yesterday. The campaign will urge consumers to check for holograms attached to official merchandise.

Backed by the International Olympic Committee, VANOC will deploy secret shoppers to purchase tickets from unauthorized dealers, trace the origin of the tickets and disable tickets from unauthorized sources.

Scalped tickets have long been an issue at Olympic Games. About 30 per cent of all available tickets are allocated to members of the so-called Olympic family, including official corporate sponsors, national Olympic committees and other sporting organizations with Olympic ties. Large numbers of those tickets tend to wind up with brokers. VANOC has vowed to crack down on the practice.

From http://www.theglobeandmail.com

You can get rich — thanks to the Olympics.

Here’s the deal, now being circulated via e-mail to folks with the right sort of address. If you live in the desirable part of Metro Vancouver (more on that later) you can rent out your place for a small fortune.

As much as $14,000 per bedroom, promises the e-mail that is being circulated by some real estate agents and homeowners. So a three-bedroom home can net as much as $42,000 for the month of February 2010. Some visitors may even rent for two months or more.

Or at least that’s what the eye-popping e-mail, delivered from an “accommodations broker” south of the border, promises. It’s hard not to get cash-in-fever with that sort of loot in the offing.

So, with my scam radar turned on high, I investigated further. I mean, why not get some Olympic gold for myself?

The deal is that an unnamed contractor is compiling a database of properties that will be available. There are no guarantees. But if you;re in a “Tier One” location –Vancouver, West Vancouver, Whistler or Richmond — you can get up to $14,000 per bedroom. The payout is a little less in so-called “Tier Two” cities –Burnaby, New Westminster and Delta. If you’re living anywhere else, what they call “Tier Three” locales, well, they’ll take your name, file away a picture of your place and get back to you. Maybe.

What this is all about, of course, is that the Olympics is the biggest tourist event ever staged on Canada’s West Coast. Just about every single hotel room in the city is already booked by the “Olympic family.” If you are one of the 200,000 to 300,000 tourists expected to come to town, this means you’re likely going to have to deal with local homeowners, or these accommodation brokers, for a place to stay.

Sounds like easy money if you own, right? Well, I found turning your humble home into an Olympic-level auberge isn’t quite as simple as you might think.

If you want to turn your money pit into a nice little personal profit centre, you’ll need to squeeze two single beds into every bedroom. Then you have to have one full bathroom for every two guests. This means if you want to rent out a three-bedroom bungalow at that heady $42,000, you must have three full bathrooms. And who has six single beds?

Then there are the other demands. You’ve got to have a maid service or be willing to clean all those bathrooms yourself, or pay your kids to pick up a sponge. And does anyone really have enough crisp, clean sheets and fluffy towels for all those demanding strangers signing the big cheques?

Don’t forget to subtract that “accommodation brokers’” fee, as well, from your profits. I couldn’t find out what it is, but count on somewhere from 15 per cent to to 25 per cent off the top. Then there’s Revenue Canada: Expect to pay taxes; it’s income.

Make sure your insurance allows you to rent out to guests. If they burn the place down or slip in the hot tub after too many shots of Jagermeister, you may be facing a big loss or lawsuit.

read more - http://www.canada.com

photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vancouvergo/

VANCOUVER — Jody Broomfield is a First Nations artist who sees only prosperity and potential for his community coming from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Angela Sterritt is a First Nations activist who sees only destruction and despair.

The two points of view represent the schism among Canada’s First Nations about whether Vancouver’s Olympics are a force for good or for evil in their ongoing social, political and economic struggles.

“One of the big questions for (First Nations) is: Do you co-operate or do you resist?” said Bruce Miller, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

“Lots of money has been put in to create co-operation . . . but the other thing about it is that this is the moment when they have the chance to make their voice really heard widely.”

As thousands of aboriginal people rallied across Canada on Thursday for a national day of action, the centrepiece of their protests in Vancouver was the Olympic countdown clock.

“We look on the extravagance of what the Olympics represent to us as indigenous people and, quite frankly, we’re pissed off,” said David Dennis, vice-president of the United Native Nations.

“So today, with our unity, with our warriors, with our women, with our chiefs, with our young people, we are standing united in telling the Olympics if they want a peaceful Games they have got to come and pay attention to the poverty that is in our communities.”

But while some aboriginal leaders promised to make the day of action events the start of an ongoing campaign to draw attention to the poverty plaguing First Nations, Sterritt has already been on the campaign trail for months.

She works with the Native 2010 Resistance Campaign which has been jumping from city to city for the last year to bolster anti-Olympic sentiment.

At the crux of their opposition is the contention that the Games are taking place on stolen land because, unlike most other provinces, B.C. does not have an elaborate land treaty system in place with First Nations.

They also say that the development racing across the province to prepare for the Olympics further entrenches economic and social degradation being suffered by their communities.

Sterritt argues that the idea that the Olympics is dividing First Nations communities is another one of “colonialization’s bag of tricks.”

“In that way yes, the media has been working hard to explicate the divisions rather than explain the real issues and impacts our people are facing as a result of the 2010 Olympic Games, such as the destruction of mountain habitat and the sacred waters, the high rate of homelessness and the policing and jailing of the poor, indigenous and racialized people,” she said in an e-mail interview.

Sterritt and other activists protesting under the banner of “No Olympics on Stolen Land” have promised to ramp up actions in the lead-up to the Games, and are hoping to have people from all parts of the country and even the world join in their movement.

Their claims about land issues and environmental destruction are legitimate, argued Taiaiake Alfred, a professor of indigenous governance at the University of Victoria.

But he said making the arguments about them now is bad strategy, he said. The Olympics are coming and there’s no way to stop them.

The larger issue at play is how indigenous people choose to define themselves, Alfred said.

“Do you see yourself in traditional terms in terms of relationships you have, or do you see yourself in kind of modern contemporary terms as an aboriginal person, as a part of Canada, one of the many ethnic groups in Canada, and therefore willing to move in the direction of harmonizing your systems and your way of thinking and your identity with everyone else and making the best of it?” he said.

Making the best of it is the goal of the Four Host First Nations, an official group representing the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations upon whose traditional territories the Games will take place.

The four bands have entered into an agreement with Vancouver’s Olympic organizers to help bolster aboriginal participation while at the same time allowing their communities to reap the untold economic benefits that the Games could bring.

Where Sterritt sees the Games destroying traditional livelihoods - she calls the group “window dressing for the atrocities our indigenous people face everyday” - the four First Nations involved see a valuable opportunity to harness the Olympic dollar to create change in their communities.

Aboriginal businesses are specifically being called upon to work on Games-related projects, money is being spent on increasing sports in aboriginal communities and the host First Nations group is developing college programs to train people for skilled labour jobs that will be needed during the Games and long after.

read more - http://canadianpress.google.com