VANCOUVER — As the Olympic torch run makes its way through metro Vancouver in the coming days, it will visit one of the largest Indo-Canadian communities in the world outside India and one of the most vibrant Chinese communities outside China.
But some say the Olympic celebrations so far have failed to reflect that diversity in the host province of the 2010 Winter Games.
There has been great debate over the presence of French at the Games, but the fact is that Mandarin would be more practical in the region where 43.6% of the total population is Chinese-Canadian, according to the 2006 census. There are more than 400,000 Chinese Canadians in the province, most concentrated in Richmond and Burnaby, B.C.
“You look at the programming at Olympics celebration ceremonies, I’m not sure the total face of Canada is represented,” said Tung Chan, CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., a charity organization aiding immigrants and promoting cultural diversity.
Vancouver mayor Gregor Robinson, who represents the Games’ host city and its two-million strong population, has noticed it, too.
“I do think people will be surprised at the cultural diversity in Vancouver,” he said of the hundreds of thousands of incoming visitors. “We are among the most diverse in the world and that’s not well-known.”
As the Olympic torch relay hits its final stride across the Lower Mainland this week, entering the Indo-Canadian heartland of Surrey, B.C., on Monday, it will encounter the urban reality of ethnic diversity.
Nigerian-born Daniel Igali, who won a gold medal for Canada wrestling at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, will light the Olympic cauldron in that city.
Some 875,000 people identify as visible minorities in Vancouver, according to a 2006 Statistics Canada census. Some 382,000 Chinese and 207,000 South Asians top a mix that also prominently includes Filipino, Korean, Southeast and West Asian, Japanese, Black and Latin American people.
“The Chinese community would like to be involved much more in the Olympic events and celebrations,” said Terence Pun at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver. “But the Chinese community likes to focus on the Chinese New Year events instead of the Olympics, because we have a lot of things to do and we need to have some focus first.”
Some weren’t happy the popular annual parade, known to draw upwards of 50,000 spectators, was shifted to an early morning Feb. 14 time slot to co-operate with Olympic events, Chan at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. said. Others considered it a reasonable concession.
It’s been unfortunate that Olympics organizers haven’t directly contacted cultural groups for consultation in the Games, Pun said, a role instead taken on by the City of Vancouver itself.
It’s the city that’s passed out thousands of buttons that say “Please Ask Me” in various Asian languages so locals can help cater to incoming crowds. While organizers have obsessed over ensuring the bilingual component will be covered, critics say the same attention has not been given to reflecting the cultural makeup that will, in fact, be present.
Signage on some downtown streets says “Welcome” in a multitude of languages, but again it was the city that handed out informational flyers about Olympics road closures in Mandarin.
“I don’t think they’ve really done enough to reach out to these communities or made an added effort,” said Shruti Joshi, a reporter at RED (Reflecting Ethnic Diversity) FM, Vancouver’s top South Asian radio station.
“We do have some good representation,” she said, noting the Surrey torch celebrations will include Punjabi singers and that a number of community members were excited when Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar ran with the torch in Toronto. “But whether the community really feels connected, that’s a different story altogether.”
There’s already a disconnect within the South Asian community with winter sports, noted Jagdeesh Mann, executive editor of the South Asian Post, and there’s only one athlete from India attending these Games, he said.
“Hopefully a Canadian athlete wins,” he said. “(South Asians are) far more prone to cheer on Team Canada for hockey than the one guy for the luge, it wouldn’t matter to us.”
Chinese-Canadians will likely rally around the huge Chinese team coming to Vancouver and Whistler, said Joe Chan, president of Fairchild Media Group, which caters to Cantonese and Mandarin audiences.
“If it was soccer in the summer, they will. But for the Winter Games, sorry to say, they may not really care.”
To make the Games more accessible for spectators, Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium assembled a 63-member multilingual broadcast team who will deliver the Games in 22 languages. Stations airing such coverage include OMNI Television, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network and Asian Television Network.