Musician Daniel Wesley will be featured at The Summer Live festival at Stanley Park.Handout
It would be folly to think that by the time Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Mangan reaches the chorus of his hit song Robots at Stanley Park on Sunday night, the echoes of the riot will have gone silent, all of that civic sociological damage will have healed. A crowd of thousands singing "robots need love too" will not be loud enough to drown out the bad memories - or take back what was lost of the city's reputation on the world stage.
But Vancouverites need love, too, and a well-run celebratory event could be a good step in feeling better about this place.
We head into Summer Live - a free, three-day festival at Brockton Point celebrating the city's 125th birthday - with the overturned burning cars and smashed store windows very fresh in the psyche. When I asked a bunch of local musicians for a lousy Vancouver memory, many mentioned the riot. Further afield, they're thinking about it, too. Like it or not (not), this is the event that has come to define us beyond our borders.
"Our city is an international laughingstock at present," reports a Summer Live participant who doesn't want to be named.
"For the last two weeks, I've been travelling and have been completely embarrassed about Vancouver as we've been mocked for our riots and the alarmingly large number of young people who thought the whole thing a big laugh."
These are international travels, I should point out. And it's the same story elsewhere in Canada. My husband, in Toronto for the past two weeks, says that with alarming consistency, the riot is the first topic of conversation brought up by the people he encounters. As a former Torontonian, I've taken some riot grief from people out East as well.
Remember the good old days when you mentioned Vancouver to an out-of-towner and they remarked on the quirky politics or the insane real-estate prices or all that pot smoking? Or maybe how we consistently top those best-place-to-live surveys? No more. Vancouver equals riot in the public consciousness outside of this city, at least right now.
Not exactly the birthday present we were hoping for.
I'm all for some moving on, though, so I have to disagree with the unnamed Summer Live participant on this: "Frankly, it's an embarrassment that we're trying to hold another party, ostensibly to celebrate 125 years." And on the artist's concern about the possibility of riots in the park this weekend.
Yes, there will be two licensed "bistros," an estimated 25,000 people per day, and rock and roll, but it's hard to imagine a riot breaking out among the face-painting and origami tables, the puppet workshops, the participatory mural, or the Coast Salish canoe races. Nor do I anticipate trouble brewing during performances by The New Pornographers, Daniel Wesley, L Subramaniam or the VSO.
Still, the city is promising "quite extensive security deployments" that were increased somewhat since the Stanley Cup riots, according to Margeret Specht, who is the city's lead on 125th anniversary cultural initiatives. "We added a little bit more security, a little more extensive deployment, but not largely," she said on Thursday. "It was certainly a consideration and we had lots of conversations about it, about what was enough and what was too much, so we're hoping to find the right balance."
With a free shuttle service and an emphasis on public transit and bicycle access, the $3.3-million event (about a third of that coming from city coffers, the rest from Ottawa and sponsorships) appears to be well-planned, although transportation snags could ensue.
It's certainly very well curated. Musically, there's a diverse lineup with some stellar acts, including a who's who of the Vancouver indie scene. The visual and performing arts are also well represented with the likes of Kokoro Dance and Neworld Theatre's PodPlays, and the time-based video program featuring work by artists such as Rebecca Belmore and Paul Wong. There's also a ton on offer for families. The cultural side of this has been very well thought out.
No matter how well things go, this isn't going to do anything to fix our international reputation. They won't care in New York or London and probably not even in Toronto that Neko Case played a great set or that a bunch of kids learned how to make kites at Stanley Park this weekend. But the city needs this right now; an event to celebrate itself. That doesn't mean all is forgotten, though. Or that at the ripe old age of 125, we don't have some growing up to do, still.
Marsha Lederman