After years of hope fired by media and political hype, the city of toronto has lost out on hosting the 2008 summer olympic games. the thousands of construction and hospitality jobs that would have come with the games coincide with rumours of a coming downturn in the general canadian economy.
For this world-class city, history seems to be repeating itself just a decade later. Toronto was deep in recession when it lost out on the 1996 Olympic Games.
Will John Q. Public ever get an answer to the nagging question of 'Why?'
Blame it on overzealous environmental activists, who this time 'round made it all the way into the boardroom of the T.O. bid.
In short, some of the same Toronto activists who sent the games to Atlanta in 1996 returned to send the 2008 games to Beijing.
While a decade ago, they were only on the fringe in a coalition called Bread Not Circuses, by the 2008 bid, they had bellied right up into the boardroom with membership on the T.O-bid Environment Committee.
On July 13, a resounding cheer went up from social activists as news of Toronto's unsuccessful bid came over a TV in an 'Olympic-free one' set up in the portlands. About 70 Games opponents had gathered near what would have been the site of Torontos Olympic stadium.
On September 30, 1990, activists who killed off Toronto's 1996 bid were, in the words of the Toronto Star's Lynda Hurst, 'cracking open the champagne and leading the victory-is-ours toast at an east-end Toronto townhouse.
"No, Olympic zealot (Paul) Henderson would not have been happy to see that at all," Hurst wrote.
Back then, Olympic Bid Chairman Paul Henderson put 100 per cent of the blame for Toronto losing the Games on Bread Not Circuses leader Michael Shapcott and his City Hall cohort, Councillor Jack Layton.
Shapcott assessed the coalitions activities as a 'significant' factor in dropping Toronto's once gung-ho, front-line ranking down to a weak third-place finish.
"Our real victory wasn't with the IOC (International Olympic Committee),' Shapcott told Hurst. 'Talking to them about poverty and homelessness and hunger is like talking to the Pope about the ordination of women. They're even further out of it than Henderson. It was ordinary people's attitudes here that we helped change" .I will never apologize for placing the needs of the poor and homeless before the needs of Olympic athletes."
Toronto's world renowned anti-Olympic activists, who once staged their protests in the front lobby of a Tokyo hotel, have never changed tactics in pointing the finger of blame at anyone but themselves.
This time it's Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman for his insensitive remarks about Mombasa.
In BNCs anti-Olympic People's Bid Book, Henderson was referred to as a millionaire plumber' "In 1985, millionaire plumber Paul Henderson, some of his corporate friends, and some city politicians decided that Toronto needed to host the 1996 Olympics."
Firebrand Henderson branded Shapcott 'a communist', a '1960s hippie' and in consideration of his launching pad the Toronto Christian Resource Centre, 'anti-Christian'
In Bread Alert, BNC's newsletter, the coalition proudly listed the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) as one of the 27 groups endorsing its mandate.
In 2002, Shapcott heads the Co-op Housing Federation, a position he inherited from former CPC leader Bill Morris.
BNC seemed to spring up from nowhere in February of 1989 with the formation of a coterie of individuals and groups concerned about the unprecedented number of mega-projects planned for Toronto' On its formal application for intervenor funding, Olympic Committee, the coalition was described as a project of the Toronto Christian Resource Centre', an incorporated, not-for-profit organization of the United Church.
Complete with slogans including "Don't run away and join the circuses" and "Stop Playing Games With Toronto", BNC was self-described as a broad-based coalition of anti-poverty activists, trade unionists, women's groups, community agencies, and arts organizations. In 1990 it claimed a supporters' list of more than 550 unnamed individuals.
On its Application for Intervenor funding, the coalition made a grant request for $27,918 from Toronto City Hall.
No news outlet has ever solved the mystery of how BNC came up with the funds to send several of its members twice to Tokyo and back. Rumours that Coca-Cola funded the group from Atlanta never got further than the speculation stage.
In the 1996 Olympic bid, someone called Peter Tabuns, who was to later become a councillor and then Executive assistant to Coun. Jack Layton was writing letters opposing the bid as spokesman for Citizens for a Safe Environment.
In the 2008 Olympic bid, Tabuns, now director of Greenpeace Canada, had a strong presence on the TO-Bid Environment committee through Layton, Greenpeace members Darryl Luscombe and Morag Carter Simpson and Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) stalwart Lois Corbett.
While bid chairman John Bitove and his hard-working retinue burned the midnight oil trying to pitch Toronto to the IOC, Layton, Luscombe and company drafted a bid Environment Committee clause that would ban the products of most Canadian industries, including 98.8 percent of Canadian timber. In other words, a total ban--with false environmental claims--on common materials, which traditionally would be used in constructing and operating the Toronto games.
In 1999, Toronto Bid CEO John Bitove told Toronto Free Press he would be "adamantly opposed" to allowing a Greenpeace-inspired, anti-industry clause for Toronto, similar to the one that was ultimately deemed unworkable for the Sydney games.
Even though experts had warned Toronto bid officials that there was no scientific justification for the restrictive clause, the activists hung in with their clause to the bitter end.
Beijing, which once painted its grass green for a delegation of visiting IOC members, had more practical environmental policies in place.
The IOC must have taken them seriously because in Moscow on July 13, 2001 Beijing, not Toronto was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games.
When jobs become harder to find in the winter of 2002, don't blame Mel Lastman, blame Greenpeace.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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