Reality check: don't blame CTV, blame me

From the “To err is human, to forgive is divine” department.

First the error.

VANOC CEO John Furlong’s book Patriot Hearts was written with Gary Mason, the Globe and Mail columnist who broke one of the biggest stories on the road to 2010: the Olympic Village financing scandal.

In a nutshell, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and the NPA-majority city council decided behind closed doors -- in a meeting format officially called “in camera” -- to bail out struggling developer Millennium when Olympic Village financier Fortress Credit Corporation stopped funding the project in September 2008.

Page 117 of Patriot Hearts says:

"It really had no choice since our deal to provide the village was with the city, not Millennium... But the decision to provide the financing was made on camera and leaked to Gary Mason." 

In camera means “in chamber” in Latin, but the meeting was not on camera.

Two vowels. Side-by-side on the keyboard. Oh lord. I. O. See?

Now for the forgiveness.

Furlong wags his finger at CTV (he does a lot of finger-wagging in the book) for putting its Chopper 9 in the sky above the Vancouver Convention Centre to get aerial footage of the mysterious structure inside a big, white box. The official Canadian broadcaster of the Games showed that a cauldron was constructed on Jack Poole Plaza!

Furlong recounts the incident on page 188

“...the local CTV affiliate had somehow discovered what was inside the big wooden box. They rented a helicopter, got a shot of it while it was briefly exposed, and put it on the air. I was livid. I couldn’t figure out why our Olympic partner would want to ruin this surprise for millions of Canadians.”

Mr. Furlong, don't be so hard on CTV. The real villain was me!

I had already been tipped by a source that the B.C. Place Stadium cauldron would be used at the opening and closing ceremonies only. There would be an outdoor burner, somewhere in the city. I saw the "white box" and the very telling camera on a pole on Jack Poole Plaza. During a tour the previous week, Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver chief operating officer Nancy Lee feigned ignorance when I asked her about the structure. Lee is normally a font of information and a frank-talker.

On Feb. 8, I cornered Premier Gordon Campbell at the opening of the Aboriginal Pavilion where he unveiled a wall display in tribute to Poole, the founding chairman of VANOC who died of pancreatic cancer.

Here's my story that broke the secret and gave CTV's flyboys a reason to go for a spin. This is what CTV came up with.

So Furlong wags his finger at the wrong media outlet.

I’ll forgive him, even if he begins wagging his finger at me for revealing one of the Games’ biggest secrets.

Olympic cauldron now relic of 2010's "Surveillance Games"

They say Jack Poole was watching over the 2010 Winter Olympics.

He's the chairman of VANOC who died after a battle with pancreatic cancer on Oct. 23, 2009 just hours after the Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia, Greece. I was having lunch in Varda, Greece -- across from the Vancouver Cafe (I kid you not) -- when I got the call with the sad news.

Premier Gordon Campbell named the plaza west of the Vancouver Convention Centre Jack Poole Plaza earlier that month. VANOC erected a mysterious white box there and built the Games' outdoor cauldron, which Wayne Gretzky lit on Feb. 12, 2010.

The fences and barricades were unpopular, to say the least. The last of the chain link was dismantled in time for Canada Day when the cauldron was relit. No ceremony on the day the Harmonized Sales Tax was introduced. An anonymous person behind the scenes in a control room turned it on and off.

On July 7, anti-poverty activists from Vancouver handed off their makeshift, toilet plunger torch to a like-minded activist from England who will give it to an anti-poverty group in London, host of the 2012 Summer Games.

While their ceremony was happening, I noticed two fellas preparing to install a surveillance camera under the central burner of the sculpture. The sun was shining and the story gods were smiling on me. See my exclusive video here.

Not only has the permanent monument to Vancouver 2010 been altered, but it now has attached to it the very item that caused civil libertarians and anti-Olympic protesters to cry foul before the Games and criticize the $900 million, taxpayer-funded security apparatus. Queen's University Prof. David Lyon called Vancouver 2010 the "Surveillance Games."

So Jack Poole may still be watching over Vancouver, but now Big Brother is watching everyone who goes to admire the cauldron. Granted, it is inside a wading pool and some drunk and/or daredevil might want to climb the cauldron. But does a surveillance camera have to be embedded in the sculpture? Could spy cameras have been erected on adjacent buildings and warning signs placed strategically to achieve the same safety objective?

Now the cauldron is like a four-legged spider.

After the Olympic glow is gone, will it become the 21st century cousin to the Terry Fox Memorial outside B.C. Place Stadium? Another ugly, poorly maintained monument to a man who dreamed big and courageously battled cancer?