Pana-meh-nia
Apathy is rampant in the city, but rural Cookstown is keen
The epicentre of Pan Am Fever, a disease deemed all but eradicated in Toronto, appears, to the best of this paper’s knowledge, to be located in a large wooden barn here.
The barn, hand built by Gerry Robinson for his wife Sally, hosts the Cookstown Antique Market just off a county road about an hour north of Toronto. It boasts 35 antique dealers, many wooden items and one dog, Dolly, an 11-yearold lab.
On a visit to the market this week, a National Post/Pan Am Games investigation uncovered several things: one, that Dolly is a very good girl who likes her ears scratched; two, that Cookstown hosts an annual “Wing Ding,” or giant garage sale, on the first weekend in June; and three, if the people of Toronto are slightly less than enthused by the prospect of hosting the Pan Am and Para Pan Am Games in two weeks, if they have, in fact, greeted the looming games with a giant collective eye roll, then the people of Cookstown, and indeed of the greater Innisfil area, seem more than happy to step in and fill the gap.
“I think it’s wonderful,” says Sally Robinson, owner/ operator of the market, when asked about the games.
“I’m thrilled,” adds Debbie Lou Bernardi, the market manager.
The 2015 Pan Am and Para Pan Am Games will be the largest single sporting event in Canadian history when they kick off on July 10. More than 7,000 athletes representing 51 sports are expected to attend.
As of this week, organizers say they’ve sold more than 600,000 of a possible 1.4 million tickets for events at venues spread from the Niagara Peninsula to Hamilton and Toronto, and even a shooting range near Cookstown.
But if enthusiasm in rural Cookstown is peaking, it remains muted, if not outright hostile, in Toronto.
There are concerns about the budget, at least $2.5 billion at current count. There are worries about traffic, which could become chaotic. And there is a general Toronto sense that the whole thing just isn’t quite worth the city’s time.
Indeed, Torontonians seem to feel about the Pan Am Games how the rest of the country feels about the Toronto Maple Leafs: an overpriced spectacle, full of second-tier talent, which is bound to disappoint.
In the city this week, Pan Am talk became so gloomy, with stories of empty hotel rooms and inscrutable signs, that Mayor John Tory, a lifelong booster, had to urge Toronto to stop acting so much like itself.
“I don’t know why we focus on the glass being half empty as opposed to half full,” an exasperated Tory said at a press conference Wednesday. “This is a great event and we should get out of the old Toronto mentality … we look at the negative.”
His comments raise a kind of chicken and egg question: are the games — undeniably expensive, politicized and, for many, inconvenient — a boondoggle-in-waiting, or is Toronto simply too Toronto to recognize a party, accept the bad and still have a good time?
Todd Smith, the Progressive Conservative provincial critic for the Pan Am Games, thinks it’s the former. He believes there’s no chance Ontario will see the kind of economic payoff from the games the government has promised. Already reports are trickling in of hotel operators with empty rooms. And with so much talk of the coming traffic chaos, he thinks it’s likely all downtown businesses will suffer.
“People have been warned to stay away from downtown Toronto, so the tourists are staying away,” he said. “And the people who actually live and work in downtown Toronto, they’re trying to get the heck out as well because I think they’re scared to death of being overrun. My fear is it’s going to look like a ghost town.”
As for the actual games, Smith says he hopes Canada does well. He might try to see some boxing or baseball, but on the whole, he isn’t much bothered.
“I’m a big fan of sports in general,” he says. “But I’ve got to say, I’ve never been a big fan of the Pan Am Games or the Commonwealth Games. I’m an Olympics kind of guy. They’re the pinnacle.”
In downtown Toronto Thursday, few seemed interested in talking about the games.
“I don’t have tickets yet,” says Michael Gingerich, who lives downtown and works just outside the core. “I can see myself going to something, one time, possibly, maybe, if someone else buys it for me.”
Allyson Sullivan, who manages a restaurant downtown, is ready.
“We’re preparing for it to be busy,” she says. “We’re over- staffing, overstocking just in case anything happens.”
Still, she’s worried about her staff, many of whom live in Toronto’s suburbs. “A lot of them won’t drive because of the road closures,” she says. “It’s going to be problematic for them at best.”
On the southern edge of downtown, flush against the waterfront, Saad Rafi sat Thursday in a boardroom in Toronto Pan Am headquarters. He was brought in to replace the games’ initial chief executive in 2013 after some ugly press over expenses.
With two weeks to go before the event itself, he remains publicly unflappable.
Asked about disappointing ticket sales, Rafi says he still intends to see all 1.4 million seats filled. Internal games research suggests most fans are waiting for the last several weeks before buying, Rafi says, so organizers have planned a late media blitz.
Even Tory himself hadn’t yet picked up his tickets Wednesday when he scolded the city for its negative attitude. Speaking in his office Thursday, he said he actually waited too long to buy. Tickets for the diving finals he wanted to see were already sold out when he went online later Wednesday.
Tory thinks the doom and gloom around the games can, to some extent, be blamed on a pre-existing attitude.
“I think it’s a Canadian thing, that we don’t really celebrate success except for in hockey or the odd sporting thing,” he says. “We look at successful things and think, ‘There must be something wrong here if things are going well.’ ’’
He adds he’s somewhat disappointed in how the games have been promoted. He also thinks some of the traffic measures, including restricting HOV lanes to cars with three or more passengers, aren’t strictly necessary. But on the whole, he believes the games will be a massive success.
“I’m an optimist about all these kind of things,” he says. “I think if you have a pessimistic attitude you’re going to end up with not as good of a result.”
An hour north of Toronto, on a wooded road well off the highway, the turnoff for the Toronto International Trap & Skeet Club appears out of the trees. Home to the shooting events for the games, the venue itself isn’t finished yet, with stacks of construction material still scattered on the grass Thursday.
For some in the area, though, unlike their counterparts in Toronto, the Pan Am Games, or at least their tiny part of it, are an unqualified good. Dimakos Stelios, who runs the Burger Station restaurant just up the road from the shooting venue, has already seen an uptick in business from Pan Am employees. He’s expecting as much as a 20 per cent boost in sales during the actual games.
Down the highway, at the Dickey Bee Honey farm, Radene Harrison spent part of her Thursday making up honey-themed gift baskets for Pan Am athletes. She says she’s excited for “everything” about the games. “I just think it’s cool.”
I can see myself going to something, maybe, if someone else buys it for me