Vancouver Canucks fans showed their true colours the day after their team lost in the Stanley Cup final.
The true fans were not the hoodlums – from all ages, both genders and a variety of races – who overturned cars, looted stores and set anything they could find on fire.
Pulling clubs, knives and other weapons from backpacks indicates the rioters went downtown with the intention to cause trouble. That they did, with the Vancouver police department and other policing services responding in kind.
Aside from those rioters who made soccer hooligans look like the well-behaved lot at the ballet, the riots in Vancouver were met with shock, shame and denigration from British Columbians and Canadians.
This is not our Vancouver, they said. And they’re right.
After the ash settles, the stories of true Canucks fans and Vancouverites are told. The people who stood up to the rioters in the midst of the chaos and told them to calm down, quit stealing and get out of their neighbourhood.
The thousands of ordinary citizens who headed downtown as the sun was rising on their beautiful city to help crews clean up the mess from the night before. The thousands more offering comments of encouragement for the city and disdain for the actions of a few residents swept across social media immediately.
Hopefully, some of those responsible for the riots will be brought to justice. And hopefully the world can look past this one incident to see that violence, rioting and stealing does not define Vancouver.
It’s the people who clean up the aftermath who do.
— editorial from the Nanaimo News Bulletin/Black Press
