I don’t have much to say about the hockey. Nobody cost us the game. Nobody stepped up to make a difference.
At the second intermission, the Canucks had 20 minutes left in their dream and three goals to make up. There must have been some sort of fiery pep talk in that dressing room, or at least a long period of intense, introspective silence. When they came out and started the third period exactly as they had finished the previous two, it was clear to me that they had suffered too much attrition to change a thing. No gas, no Cup.
Time ticked down, an empty-net goal was scored, and I left the house in a hurry. I stopped briefly on the sidewalk to share the disappointment with a young couple from three doors down. After a short chat, I explained that I worked at The Province and had to be on my way.
“I’ve got to go back to the newsroom now and hope there’s no riot.”
The best I can say about the loss is that at least I was used to it. For a lot of teens and young men among the 100,000-plus who gathered downtown, it was the first time. I suppose they didn’t know how to react. But they’d all heard stories of 1994, and those stories had settled into their collective subconscious. Now, those stories were whispering that rioting was an option. And when the professional anarchists began taking off their Canucks jerseys (likely with tags still on) and torching them in the street, the only thing the amateurs needed was an invitation to participate. The first overturned car was it.
There’s nothing quite like arriving in a newsroom when the shit’s starting to hit the fan. If you’re unaware that news is breaking, it becomes quite clear before you’ve taken three steps inside. People are moving at twice their normal weekday pace, and shouting across cubicles has displaced all other forms of communication.
On this occasion, I had heard game broadcaster John Shorthouse mention reports of some nastiness outside the arena during my 15-minute drive in to work. Sure enough, the first reporter I saw when I arrived had just come in from the street and said a car was on fire. As I set up my computer, we heard somebody had fallen from the Rogers Arena viaduct. It was on.
The next five hours were a blur. On the web desk, we each quickly found a niche; Katie working the social media accounts, Cheryl compiling reporters’ dispatches into coherent stories, Dharm attacking all the video footage that came in. I manned the live blog that we had set up at the top of our home page, pushing out our reports, photos and videos, and anything worthwhile that our eyewitnesses or competitors were coming up with, in as close to real time as possible.
Our live-blogging tool lets you see how many people are watching at any given time. It started at around 700 — about the same number of people who tuned in when news broke that Premier Campbell was resigning. As I worked, I kept glancing up at the number: 1,000… 2,000… 3,000… 4,000… 5,000. It stops counting at 5,000.
I wish I could tell you my reaction as the pictures and videos rolled in and I started to actually see what was happening in my city: black smoke, burning cars, broken glass, bloodied heads. But there wasn’t a lot of time for reflection. Maybe a quick head shake every once in a while, then on to the next task.
We had half a dozen reporters out in the chaos. Cell phone service was spotty, and we got a lot of information straight from their Twitter feeds. One got hit with a gas bomb, another had a beer bottle explode off her shoulder. One couldn’t take the tear gas and went home early, another described what the gas felt like and went looking for the next looting scene. We’d lose touch with people for 25 minutes and start to wonder what had happened to them, then they’d turn up on Twitter at a new flashpoint. They reported. Occasionally, they judged. Could we blame them? They were disgusted.
Sometime around 1:15 a.m., just as things were getting under control, I looked up from my screen and saw the five or six reporters — including a female summer intern who’s been with us all of three weeks — slowly file into the newsroom with red in their eyes and smoke in their clothes. I stared in awe, and started to slowly clap my hands. The rest of the newsroom followed suit. It had been a bad night for Canuck fans, a worse night for Vancouverites, but a great night for the Province newsroom.
So now here I am, just one of several hundred people trying to explain in a web article what it all means. I’ve read more opinions in the past two days than I care to count. Many writers have made their points with eloquence and certainty, but those aren’t the ones I find myself nodding in agreement with. I believe the ones who don’t have a clue.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the best way to get past this would be for Vancouver to host a Game 7 sometime around June 15, 2012. The debate still rages about the makeup of Wednesday night’s crowd, but I believe the experienced anarchists and bridge-and-tunnel thugs were far outnumbered by regular Canuck fans — labourers, undergrads, privileged prep-schoolers — who had been wound tight for a month, then got liquored up and lost their minds. Before Wednesday, those guys had never had their riot. They had only heard about it and wondered what it must be like. Now they know. It might have been a thrill, but I doubt they’re so proud of it that they’d do it all again next year.
That’s my take on the riot. I’m sorry I don’t have more of a take on the game, but that’s the spring of 2011 for you: I started a hockey blog and a riot broke out.
