News Shorts
By Kristina Mameli, News Editor
: Anti-Olympic graffiti not tolerated

   

“With glowing hearts, we kill the arts,”
read the anti-Olympic graffiti that adorned
several walls where murals displaying
Vancouver’s arts culture once stood.

The graffiti along Beatty and between
Dunsmuir and Georgia, was visible for only
a few days, located near what-will become

- LiveCity venues during the Games. The
phrase, etched in white around Olympic
rings, and more like it, have since been
painted over in blue.

Snow worries

Mere weeks before the 2010 Winter Games,
lack of snow in the forecast is beginning

to concern Olympic organisers. Local
mountains such as Cypress, the freestyle
skiing and snowboard-cross venue, have
been forced to shut down earlier than
planned in an effort to preserve what is left
of the snow.

The forecast leading up to the Games
is not calling for any snow at all, nor any
temperatures cold enough to even sustain
fake snow. VANOC now says it plans to
truck in stockpiled snow atop structures
made of wood and straw to properly fill out
the courses.

_ Canada reaches out to Haiti relief
Canadians have traditionally been charitable
people, but their response to the devastation
in Haiti truly embodies that charitable
nature. On a per capita basis, Canada is a
world leader in its generosity. Continuing

_ in that vein, Canada has asked to lead the

reconstruction of the nation.

As of this writing, the Canadian public
has contributed upwards of $40 million

to relief funds, with Ottawa promising to

match every penny. i

 

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Vancouver 2010 promises to be the greenest Games ever

By Tanya Colledge, Staff Reporter

ANOC has promised that the Vancouver
\ / 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics will

be the greenest games ever, and so far, their
sustainability initiatives have been a testament that
British Columbia is determined to keep that promise.
VANOC’s website offers a comprehensive list of how
they have designed the upcoming games in February
to manage the environmental, social and economic
impacts and opportunities in order to create a lasting
legacy for our province.

VANOC taking sustainability into their action
plan for the Games is an Olympic first—one that is
sure to be mimicked and be a catalyst for change
in the future. By creating systems, such as the
Sustainable Sport and Event toolkit (SSET), the
committee has been able to successfully put these
greener goals into action. Already in use by the
Swiss and Canadian National Olympic Committees,
Speed Skating Canada and the International Cycling
Union, the SSET is a web-based how-to guide to
incorporating sustainability into sport organizations
and events to produce not only sustainable operations
and events, but to inspire athletes, sponsors and fans
to do their part.

The city’s construction of green venues has been
one of the most visual cues to the greening of the
Games. With the adoption of the Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building
Rating System, venues such as the Richmond Olympic
Oval have been constructed using one million feet of
lumber harvested from pine-beetle killed forests and
feature energy-saving refrigeration and rain-water
collection. The new Vancouver Convention Centre
also has a rainwater collection system, but in the form
of 400,000 plants, free from chemicals and pesticides,
that will capture rainfall to use within the building and
for irrigation.

VANOC has also incorporated heat recovery
solutions into many of the venues to reuse waste heat
and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and electrical
energy use. Excess heat created at Nat Bailey Stadium
for example, home of the curling events during the
Games, will be used to heat a 50-metre pool located at
the new community centre beside the building. Other
venues such as the Whistler Sliding Centre plan to use
the excess heat generated to heat the plant and guest
services building.

For a list of more ways VANOC has built
sustainability into the Games, visit www.
vancouver2010.com.

 

   
      

Kristina Mameli

news editor

ancouver has enjoyed a long history with
\ | the streetcar—in fact the first network was
built in 1890 by the B.C. Electric Railway
Company. It was an innovation that was slowly
overtaken; trolleys and buses began to replace the
streetcar as technology advanced and by the end of
February 1958, the last passenger streetcar, car 1231,
traveled the B.C. Electric track from Brighouse to
Kitsilano on its final journey. Until now, that is.
The City of Vancouver, in partnership with
Bombardier Transportation, has borrowed two
streetcars from Brussels, Belgium to form the

in time for the Olympics
iF P ‘

Olympic Line, a free service that will shuttle
passengers from Cambie, through 2", to Granville
Island. The streetcar’s inaugural journey happened
Thursday at 9:30 a.m. The line will continue to run
from 6:30 to 12:30 a.m. until March 21. The cars
hold 50 seated people and 128 standing with room for
strollers and/or bikes.

Streetcars are quieter, more spacious and a much
cleaner alternative to buses, running on electricity.
The Olympic Line project is already the recipient of
the Sustainability Star Award for providing a solution
to a local sustainability issue that could potentially
branch into a solution for a more global problem.

TransLink and the City of Vancouver plan to
eventually expand the streetcar network, linking the
Canada Line and the Expo Lines as well as acting as
an extension of the Millennium Line. The proposed
plan would also see links between places like
Chinatown, Gastown and Yaletown.