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ABSTRACT
If the repeated pursuit of Sport Mega-Events (SMEs) is a kind of addiction, then Canada is a serial user. Few countries of relatively modest size have so consistently pursued various manifestations of these events over such a protracted period of time. This experience has led to ongoing learning and growing organisational sophistication, at least at the level of logistics, reflecting processes of policy ‘transfer’ characteristic of a cluster of countries that have become habituated SME hosts. Moreover, Canada’s SME hosting has reflected the increasingly self-conscious pursuit of a form of ‘soft power’ by public authorities that, while difficult to quantify, has reinforced a global image of Canada and Canadians as safe, reliable and competent. Concomitantly, Canada’s serial SME hosting illustrates the inequitable distribution of mega-event legacies, masked by the unique capacity of such events to generate intense collective experiences of ‘communitas’ that temporarily transcend pre-existing social divisions. In this sense, the Canadian experience reflects the intensification of neoliberal modes of governance in and through SMEs, including the growing salience of public–private partnerships, the exploitation of SMEs for promotional purposes and the insulation of such events from processes of democratic accountability. To illustrate these dynamics, three pivotal events are explored – the ‘first order’ Montréal Summer Games (1976), the ‘quasi-first order’ Vancouver Winter Games (2010) and the ‘third order’ Toronto Pan American Games (2015). They will be compared across three legacy categories: the symbolic or normative ‘big ideas’ they have sought to project; infrastructural legacies, both sporting and non-sporting; and sport development legacies, particularly concerning elite sport.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for financial support, Jonathan Grix and the journal's anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, and the participants in the workshop on ‘State strategies for leveraging sport mega-events,’ University of Sao Paulo, Brazil for their comments, ideas, and company.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Quasi-first-order because Winter Games enjoy something of the branding lustre and media attention of the Olympic phenomenon as a whole, though on a scale that is much smaller than Summer Games and with an event line-up that appeals to a minority of the world’s countries and people.
2. Including, but extending well beyond, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of countries.
3. The acronym used most commonly in Quebec to encompass the nine other provinces and three federal territories in which English is the majority language.
4. The most conspicuous political cleavage in Quebec since the 1970s has been between ‘sovereigntists’ (or ‘separatists’) aligned primarily with the Parti Québecois in provincial politics, and ‘federalists’ who may also be self-identified Quebec nationalists but who oppose the separation of Quebec from the Canadian federation. Their principal political vehicle has been the Parti Libéral.
5. Montréal was selected by COC over a rival bid from the largest city in ‘English Canada’, Toronto.
6. Douglas Brown (Citation2008) characterises the pre-Olympic “Game Plan ‘76” as “a meek federal program” and “a classic example of ‘too little too late’.”
7. It didn’t hurt that the Games ended in storybook fashion, with Canada beating the US in overtime of the Gold Medal ice hockey match – at the time the most-watched television broadcast in Canadian history, with an average of 16.6 million viewers.
8. It is worth noting that the Vancouver-Whistler combination has a considerably longer history of Olympic bidding, going to back to efforts to host the 1968 and 1976 Games. See VANOC (Citation2009, p. 15–18).
9. 64% of voters supported the ‘Yes’ side in the plebiscite. See Edelson (Citation2011, p. 813).
10. A total of more than C$5.4 million in 2014, according the annual report of the Richmond Oval Corporation. See http://richmondoval.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/richmondolympicoval_annualreport2014_web.pdf, p. 34.
11. The third least affordable housing market in the world after Hong Kong and Sydney, according to the 2015 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. See Craze (Citation2016).
12. Toronto surpassed Montréal as Canada’s largest and wealthiest city following the 1976 Olympics and, more importantly, the election of the separatist Parti Québecois later that same year.
13. The Bid Book (2009, p. 4) touted Toronto as ‘the third-largest financial market in North America and home to a regional population of 8.1 million people (and with) over 200 million (more) people … within a three hour flight or one day drive of Toronto…’, and ‘a true global media hub’
14. Notwithstanding the fact that the Brazilian broadcaster paid a record US$30 million for the rights to the Games.
15. It has sometimes been said that the only thing uniting Canadians is shared hostility towards Toronto.
16. Strikingly, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell – one of the most outspoken boosters of the 2010 Games – was deposed not long afterwards after reneging on a promise not to implement a new ‘Harmonized Sales Tax’ (HST).