Angry fans rioted in Vancouver after the Canucks’ loss to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals, torching cars and looting stores in an unusual outbreak of violence that belied the reputation of Canadians as generally polite and peaceful.
What seemed distinctly more Canadian were the e-mails the Globe received from some Canucks fans, apologizing to the city of Boston for their fellow fans’ behavior.
“I would like to congratulate the Boston Bruins on a game well played for the Stanley Cup,” Lindy Bellamy, a Canucks fan from Abbotsford, British Columbia, wrote to the Globe. “And most of all I would like to apologize to the Bruins hockey team and the people of Boston for the outrageous behavior and disgusting sportsmanship shown by a small few that caused so many problems in riots in the city of Vancouver after the game.”
“These are not hockey fans,” Sarah Forrest from Vancouver also wrote to the Globe. “These are trouble makers who would have rioted whether we lost or won the game. The true fans of Vancouver are disgraced by what is going on in our city.”
Vancouver Sun columnist Cam Cole summed up the feeling, writing today that the the city was “throbbing with nervous, edgy energy” even before the game.
“Most of the hundreds of thousands who crammed into streets, lined up for last-minute liquor or to get into watering holes, were too young to have suffered all 39 previous years of Canuck disappointments, but they were ready to erupt, nonetheless — in joy or sorrow, delirium or anger, depending what transpired up on the giant screens scattered through the downtown area.
“Now we know which way it went. Shame on us,” he wrote.
Boston Globe
What seemed distinctly more Canadian were the e-mails the Globe received from some Canucks fans, apologizing to the city of Boston for their fellow fans’ behavior.
“I would like to congratulate the Boston Bruins on a game well played for the Stanley Cup,” Lindy Bellamy, a Canucks fan from Abbotsford, British Columbia, wrote to the Globe. “And most of all I would like to apologize to the Bruins hockey team and the people of Boston for the outrageous behavior and disgusting sportsmanship shown by a small few that caused so many problems in riots in the city of Vancouver after the game.”
“These are not hockey fans,” Sarah Forrest from Vancouver also wrote to the Globe. “These are trouble makers who would have rioted whether we lost or won the game. The true fans of Vancouver are disgraced by what is going on in our city.”
Vancouver Sun columnist Cam Cole summed up the feeling, writing today that the the city was “throbbing with nervous, edgy energy” even before the game.
“Most of the hundreds of thousands who crammed into streets, lined up for last-minute liquor or to get into watering holes, were too young to have suffered all 39 previous years of Canuck disappointments, but they were ready to erupt, nonetheless — in joy or sorrow, delirium or anger, depending what transpired up on the giant screens scattered through the downtown area.
“Now we know which way it went. Shame on us,” he wrote.
Boston Globe
