by Gary Singh
With the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games less than nine months away, Vancouver is awash in new infrastructure. The Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center has tripled its size and new hotels and luxury accommodations are appearing everywhere.
In the suburb of Richmond, the brand new Olympic Oval venue will host the long track speed skating events, with the new Canada Line linking Richmond to downtown Vancouver in just 20 minutes. Two hours up the Sea to Sky Highway in Whistler, the Peak 2 Peak gondola, an unprecedented project, opened last December and now links Whistler and Blackcomb mountains together for a thoroughly staggering 2.75 mile gondola ride.
But what really makes the 2010 Games unique is the cooperation between the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) and the aboriginal peoples of British Columbia (BC), which boasts 198 First Nations (indigenous tribes), more than any other province in Canada. Because the Games overall are being held within the traditional and shared territories of four nations—the Lil’Wat, the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh—those nations collectively incorporated a nonprofit organization and were a major part of Vancouver’s proposal to host the Games.
