VANCOUVER NEEDS TO CLEAN UP BEFORE 2010

WHISTLER, B.C. - The date is Feb. 12, 2010, where for 16 days this
little town two hours north of Vancouver will be the centre of world
television and don't you think we're proud - and a little nervous.

The Winter Olympics poobahs knew what they were doing.

The two biggest ski mountains in North America right outside your
ski-in, ski-out condo, a mile of vertical drop for skiers, 8,200
acres, 200 named runs, breathtaking views and, as one ski writer put
it, "more bowls than Conrad Black's china service."

Best of all: no traffic jams. To have traffic jams you have to have
cars. Thanks to the genius of some stubborn mountain guys here some 25
years ago who designed the town, you can't see a single car at Whistler.

They're all banished far away on vast parking lots that are out of
sight. The result is that you have a walkable village that could have
been plucked out of an Austrian or Swiss retreat in the Alps.

There's nothing like it on this continent. Grouped around village
squares, walk from your restaurant to your jeweller to your pub to
your bank to your restaurant to your restaurant with the ski lift
within sight past the last pub.

On any stroll you can spot the Japanese - spiffiest ski togs of all.
Drifting by are the French accents - in the restaurants especially,
naturally: the Germans, the unmistakable Brits, some Chinese. They're
all checking out the joint.

At the top of the Whistler run there is the usual food stop for the
hungry mob seeking burgers and beer. But this is different.
Christine's has pristine white tablecloths, silver cutlery and (hello
there, Conrad) china tea cups. A European couple at the next table,
amazed, say there is nothing like this even in St. Moritz - all the
classy restaurants are down below at the foot of the mountain.

There's only one fly in the ointment. The smart local boys, Intrawest,
who own the Whistler-Blackcomb complex also own Mont Tremblant outside
Montreal and have made so much moola by mixing condo development into
their plans that New York money came sniffing.

Something aptly named Pirate Capital quietly acquired 18 per cent of
Intrawest in the last year. The local lads grew nervous and have
announced their plans to be purchased by Fortress Investment Group, a
firm based in New York - with some $23 billion of institutional funds
in their portfolio.

So now little Whistler village where you can't see the cars will be
bossed by some chaps in Manhattan who have had no connection or
experience with ski resorts - and have probably never seen snow. Hold
onto your poles.

AND ANOTHER THING

There's an old line about California. The line is imagine the United
States as the kitchen table. If you picked up one side and tipped it,
all the junk would fall to one side,

That's why California has collected all the nutbars and goofy people
who live there.

If you applied that theory to Canada, when the table was tipped all
the flotsam would end up in Vancouver where the mild weather allows
the drunks to actually sleep under the bridges all year round - and
the recent storm that wrecked Stanley Park revealed at least a dozen
homeless men who live permanently on the forest floor.

Vancouver has a problem. A serious problem.

Hastings is one of the city's major streets. The Vancouver Club, where
B.C.'s Establishment sip their gin, sits on Hastings. Not far away, it
intersects with Howe Street, Vancouver's version of Bay Street, where
the big boys play.

But just four blocks further on, Hastings dissolves into Hell,
something called the Downtown Eastside. It is so bad it is a tourist
attraction - if you are safely in your car.

Slumped bodies on the sidewalk. Huddled groups exchanging drugs.
Hookers. Despair and dirt and boarded shops. The sip here is heroin,
cocaine and Aqua Velva. For four blocks of sickness. It is something
out of Dante's Inferno.

In 2010, the world press will converge on Vancouver, which will stage
the hockey and skating events, Whistler handling the alpine end. If
this sordid mess is still there - reporters being reporters - the
world will get a more than a slightly different impression of a city
advertised as the second-most beautiful site on the globe (Rio is No.
1).

The previous city administration cooked up the goofy idea of "safe
injection spots" for the addicts. Result: more addicts. Some 150
hookers working the four blocks.

Vancouver has three years to clean it up. Otherwise it will be the
shame of Canada.