Key chains, lapel pins, hoodies and tee-shirts, backpacks, mugs and water bottles, all with the image of a denuded porcupine called PACHI, are a key part of the hoopla that already accompanies this summer’s Pan- American Games in the Toronto region. “Bring home a plush PACHI and gear up for the Games with the latest apparel, accessories and more. Save $10 when you bundle your purchase.” If this bric-a-brac was Disney flixploitation it would not bother me, but this colourful junk won’t pay back much of my federal and provincial tax money that is going into an extravaganza that will interrupt the daily lives of everyone not housebound within a 100 kilometres of Downtown, none of whom were asked if they wanted it.
July’s sporting spectacle is all about showing Canada off to Latin America. The rest of the world outside the Americas won’t be watching and the Yanks won’t be awed since they’ll assume we do things well like them, only less so. I personally don’t give a hoot about impressing Latin Americans, but, again, I wasn’t consulted. Back home they have some nice scenery but mostly awful governments which are downright wonky or sleazy or both. Spain is nice – I was there two years ago for my son’s wedding - but every other place that uses their fine language abuses it painfully. The public announcements at the games, made in some variety of Hispanic Spanish, are likely to make me bilious.
Some deep thinkers hereabouts will soon be chosen to ‘Relay the Torch’ around and about. To my knowledge no Ancient Greeks lived in the Americas, but perhaps we just haven’t found their remains yet. Maybe the Torch will smoke them out of the ground?
The ‘directors’ of this circus are lead by the Hon. David Peterson who one hopes does better at this than he did in government or with his French-fry dispensing machines business in Vancouver whose rapid demise I was on hand to witness. None of the eleven names on his board mean anything; evidently they are Canuck celebrities in sports I don’t follow.
If you feel pressured to volunteer, do keep in mind that you’ll be having “the chance to have fun and be at the heart of the hottest event in 2015”. If you believe this and sign up in June, I do hope for your sake that the latter boast is not literally true, but that the former is. Personally I won’t count on sixteen days of herding crowds of fractious noisy Latins being ‘fun’, so I’ll not be joining you. Our guys sporting around with folk from a pack of dysfunctional states strikes me as about as appealing as supervising Russians at Sochi.
YOU ARE READING
Gear Up For The Games
HumorA rant over the hijacking of sport by retail marketing, the fabrication of citizen benefit, and misdirection of funds better spent on ourselves rather than impressing inconsequential foreign nations
