Friday, June 17, 2011

Stanley Cup Final - the aftermath

I'm sorry to say that this is not going to be a sewing related post. Frankly there hasn't been enough sewing done in this house to warrant one. :-( There will be one soon though, I promise.

In the meantime I wanted to take a quiet minute or two and write a bit about a rather bizarre local event that some of you might have heard about in the news. They're calling it Riot 2011 or The Stanley Cup Riot or the Vancouver Riot.

It was a travesty, it was sad and awful and is in no way something that Vancouver or BC is proud of. For those who don't know the story the Vancouver Canucks made it to the final round of the Stanley Cup. They fought hard and took it to 7 games. That final game was played in Vancouver. We lost. And then some people got really stupid. There were fires and looting and people got hurt. Lots more people got scared.
The only good thing to say about the riot is that no one died.

We as BCers are ashamed at how a small group of people acted. We just ask that people remember that it was only a small group and that it in no way represents the rest of us.

There are some good things that happened during and after the event and I would like to focus on that.
There were people who stood up for what was right and there were more people that stood up for them.
A lot of people came out into Vancouver where some of the worst damage and looting happened and helped clean it up yesterday.
After 2 police vehicles were burned Wednesday night another police car was found today covered in notes of gratitude and well wishes for the Vancouver police. It is a beautiful sight.
Some people have realized that what they did  Wednesday night was wrong and have come forward and turned themselves in. I applaud them for doing the right thing. I know that admitting you're wrong is never easy. Wednesday night they were people to be ashamed of, today I can feel a small piece of pride in what they did today.

This is not an event to be celebrated but perhaps, if we learned from it, we can celebrate that.

Ta! 

PS  To all those people who posted about their "accomplishments" during the looting or posed after being caught on camera being stupid....do the rest of the world a favour and don't procreate..Please!!!