One of my earlier Sports Baby blog posts was titled "Vancouver Canuck fans are like my baby."
When my wife remembered that title she was horrified, what with last month's downtown bonfire and all. She was also horrified by the riot itself, frowning away and eventually choosing to leave the room rather than watch people act so boorishly.
I was the opposite. I couldn't get enough of it. It was a lot more entertaining than the damn game 7, wasn't it?
I feel a little funny writing about the riot so long after it happened but 1) I work for a newspaper that only publishes two sports sections a week so I'm used to reheating cold chicken from time to time; and 2) we're now one month removed from the riot and everyone still seems to be talking about it, so what the hell. Somewhere a Hummer still smoulders.
As I watched the riot I was thinking:
2. Those rioters suck at building barricades; and
3. The claims coming from the cops and mayor — that this was not the work of hockey fans but rather the devil deeds of criminals and "anarchists" — were as silly as the world's tallest jockey.
Of course a lot of people called bullshit on the mayor and it very quickly became clear that these weren't anarchists at all. They were hockey fans. They were our friends and neighbours. They were Vancouverites. They were car salesmen. They were UBC students. They were water polo players.
Back to my wife. Her horror stemmed from her relatively new designation as "mother." As the drugstore cowboys smashed their way through London Drugs, no doubt stealing Gold Bond powder and other people's vacation photos, my wife couldn't help but repeat the refrain: "those are someone's kids doing this."
And she wasn't thinking about Ma and Pa Anarchist watching on stolen cable TV as they tore the labels off unsold mattresses. The rioters, and their parents, came from all walks of life. A dread passed over my wife as she thought of one day seeing our little guy all grown up and playing air guitar with a smashed up mannequin's leg on the 11 o'clock news. Oh, the shame.
The riot wound down and amazingly no one was killed. But then things got really bad. The public shaming, rage, threats and judgment that followed the riot as seemingly limitless photographic and video evidence emerged was much more frightening to me than people kicking Sears.
Here's the thing: young people are idiots. I grew up in a very loving, respectable middle-class, two-parent family. I was a good kid. And while I never had physical altercations with the local police force, I can certainly remember my friends and I running and hiding from them on occasion following some idiot teenager shenanigans. Fire may or may not have been involved at some point. Transplant those shenanigans to Robson Street after watching a hockey team lose game 7 and it's not ridiculous to think that my actions could have led me to become one of the famous riot idiots outed by online evidence and anger, the shame following me for life. That would not have been cool.
Back to my son, idiots, and shame. I'm a daddy now so everything I think about revolves around my boy. Here's the question: what if my son had been there? What if I saw him on some grainy news video doing something that looked really bad? What if it ruined his life long before things like the judicial system or facts could be introduced?
Here's a hypothetical: Let's say it's 2029 and the Canucks have finally made it back to the Stanley Cup finals. My boy, now a young man, wants to be a part of the downtown celebration. The following stuff happens. The question is, when should I feel the shame of raising a rioting monster:
Step 1: My son and his friends from his basketball team go to watch game 7 as the Canucks take on expansion franchise the Mexico City Sombreros. (I already feel shame. I can't believe my son is a Canucks fan.)
Step 2: He and his friends are 18 so they're old enough to vote and go to war but not old enough to drink alcohol in B.C. Instead they drink six Red Bulls each.
Step 3: The Canucks, worn out from a long team walk on the Seawall to "find themselves," lose. Trouble starts. Someone burns a stuffed Speedy Gonzalez doll. A nearby hover car is lit on fire. My son and his friends see a young family trying to get away as a mob fight starts nearby. They rush over to help the family leave the area.
Step 4: Though awkward and pimply, the boys are all tall so they become targets for hopped up water polo thugs looking to fight. To keep his friends from getting pummeled, my son says "no no no no no no no" over and over and pushes some dudes back to clear some space. The police barge in with clubs.
Step 5: Things start to get really dicey so my son and his friends make for a SkyTrain station. On their way out the team's resident jackass (every sports team has one), pissed off about getting clubbed, kicks a store window.
Step 6: Free Holograph Phones! A shower of phones rains out of one of the 168 telecommunication retailers on Robson Street. As wild-eyed water polo players stuff phones down their Speedos all around him, my son scoops up what he can and brings it to a cop who is standing nearby doing nothing. "Eff off," the cop says.
Step 7: My son stuffs a pair of retro skinny jeans into the gas tank of a police car and lights them on fire. Then he punches a police horse in the mouth and runs to Stanley Park and chops down the tallest tree.
As I said, this is a hypothetical. Obviously grown up Sports Baby would never put himself in any of those situations. He'd be off with the Intergalactic Peace Corp saving baby space pandas from Martians or something.
But say it did happen like that. I'd say there's nothing in the first six steps (except cheering for the Canucks) that I could get really upset about and be forced to take away his used, piece of junk 2016 Toyota Prius.
Until Step 7, the token ridiculous joke step, there's not much to really kill a kid over. A little bad judgment mixed in with wrong place at the wrong time. But it's conceivable that at any point between Step 3 and Step 6 a camera or a video recorder or a brand new iHat could have captured him doing what may have appeared to be hardcore rioting. Facebook tag, story in The Province, basketball scholarship to Ball State revoked, poop thrown at our front door, life ruined.
It's not all that far fetched.
Let's come back to 2011 — Awwww, my baby is so cute and such a good boy. Kisses for daddy? High five? Alright! Sorry, I had to reset his future.
Anyway, a coworker of mine has a 15-year-old son whose first time ever venturing downtown with his buds without parental supervision was for game 7 of the Canucks vs. Bruins series. A car flipped and burned right next to them and, because they're good kids who were scared shitless, they ran straight to the nearest cop, told him about the car and asked how they could get out of there. Take that kid one year later and maybe he sticks around a little, laughs with his buds and snaps a few cellphone picks. A camera catches him at the wrong angle and all of a sudden he's another one of the criminals to be tried and convicted on Facebook.
The thought that I was ultimately left with after the riot and its aftermath is that my wife was right. In cases like this — and with the explosion of social media this is only just the beginning — we'd do well to remember that those are people's children out there. I'm not the first to say it and I won't be the last, but before we start doling out online, vigilante justice we all need to realize that every picture does not necessarily tell the whole truth. If the Internet brands you as evil, the sting of that will likely burn your whole life.
As a parent, that would be a pretty horrible thing to see your kid go through. One of my baby's favourite things to do is to knock down toy towers. We build them up and he slams them down with glee. When he does it we all watch and cheer. Uh oh.
What's that slogan? We are all Canucks? Maybe that's not so far from the truth.
Photo: Andy Clark/Reuters
Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy
