Toggle Menu

Protests Dog Olympic Torch Relay Across Canada

The "running of the Olympic torch." Its roots lie in the propaganda department of Nazi Germany, as Joseph Goebbels saw it as an ingenious way to spread the Nazi gospel across Europe in the leadup to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 

Dave Zirin

January 23, 2010

The "running of the Olympic torch." Its roots lie in the propaganda department of Nazi Germany, as Joseph Goebbels saw it as an ingenious way to spread the Nazi gospel across Europe in the leadup to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was protested to great public fanfare in 2008 before the Beijing Summer Games. But with next to no publicity in the United States, the torch run has been protested across our neighbor to the north. Chanting "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land", "Get your torch off our land, we don’t want your Olympic scam" and "2010 Homes not 2010 Games", 13 people have been arrested as protests have hit a panoply of places including Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, Six Nations, Onedia First Nations, Guelph, Toronto, London, Barrie, Kitchener, Stratford, Sept-Îles, Montreal, Kahnawake First Nations, Quebec City, Victoria, Comox Valley, Halifax, Ottawa, Kingston, and St. John’s.

In a statement from the Olympic Resistance Network they said, "While Olympic corporate sponsors are getting bailed out, Indigenous lands are being stolen, people are becoming homeless, thousands are losing their jobs and access to public services, the environment is being destroyed, and civil liberties are being eroded with almost a billion dollars sunk into surveillance. The negative Olympic legacy is turning into an anti-Olympic legacy of resistance across the country."

This year’s Olympics, there may actually be more protestors than tourists at the Vancouver Games. The games aren’t yet on the sports media radar in the states. This year the news media might beat them to it.

Dave ZirinTwitterDave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.


Latest from the nation