Dan Rather here to show ugly side of Vancouver

Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, November 02, 2007

The Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighbourhood in Canada, has long been a time-bomb this city has never bothered to defuse. Now it's about to explode on the international stage.

Dan Rather, one of the best and most famous U.S. TV journalists of his generation, is in Vancouver for the next few days with a news crew working with students at the UBC School of Journalism.

His subject is the drug- and crime-infested neighbourhood in Vancouver's heart, our very own made-in-Canada ghetto that could hold its own with any in Rather's home country.

This report, which the students are also helping Rather film, is not going to be the sort of report the board of trade will be touting.

Some unflattering international attention became inevitable the day Vancouver won the competition to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, of course.

The world's media always dissect -- sometimes vivisect -- an Olympic host city and country.

But we've made it more delicious for the journalists by, a) labelling ourselves "the best place on Earth", b) constantly gloating about those surveys in The Economist that rate us the most livable city on the planet and, c) doing far too little for years to rescue the Downtown Eastside, an unfolding human tragedy in our midst.

For international journalists -- especially the edgy, poke-the-powers-that-be sort that Rather fashions himself as -- the Downtown Eastside story offers an irresistible juxtaposition: A neighbourhood of abject poverty surrounded by the five-star hotels that will be booked solid during the Olympics. It's the hubris of the privileged smack next door to the images of a humiliating social failure, a ratings grabber every time.

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