Vancouver Winter Games torch relay is diverted

VICTORIA, British Columbia — Protesters forced the 2010 Vancouver Games torch relay to be diverted from its planned route Friday, hours after organizers kicked off what is supposed to be the longest domestic torch relay in Olympic history.

Several hundred protesters, angry that billions are being spent on the Olympics instead of housing and health care, blocked Victoria city streets for hours, preventing the torch from passing by Government House and forcing organizers to reroute.

Relay organizers attempted to drive the torchbearers around the demonstration. Instead, they were taken several miles away to Victoria’s waterfront.

Then, more than a half-dozen participants lined up side-by-side along the road, where they passed the flame from torch to torch without running their segments.

The run resumed with a short relay to the day’s final stop, the provincial legislature.

Relay organizers said in a statement the rerouting was implemented “to ensure the safety of all participants.”

Earlier Friday, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson carried the flame, burning in a miner’s lantern, out of the aircraft that arrived from Greece, where the flame was lit by the rays of the sun on the site of the ancient games.

Aboriginal native Canadians took the flame from Robertson and brought it across Victoria’s inner harbor in their traditional canoes. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell made short speeches.

“All of this country is set to bask in the Olympic glow as the flame visits communities from coast to coast to coast,” Harper said. “The run we are kicking off today going to be the longest torch relay within a single country in Olympic history.”

Triathlon gold medalist Simon Whitfield and speedskating champion Catriona Le May Doan joined to light the torch and kick off the relay that will cover nearly 28,000 miles.

Whitfield won gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and silver at the 2008 Beijing Games. Le May Doan is the only Canadian to successfully defend an individual Olympic title, having won gold at Nagano and Salt Lake City.

Over 106 days, the torch will stop in every Canadian province and territory leading to the lighting of the cauldron at BC Place. The games will be held from Feb. 12-28 in Vancouver and Whistler.

The torch relay will reach the most extreme corners of the country, to Alert in Canada’s arctic and L’Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland, on Canada’s Atlantic coast. It will pass through more than 1,000 communities and be carried by 12,000 torchbearers on a journey by plane, boat, bike, dogsled, skateboard and other modes of transportation.

Those that attended the rally observed a moment of silence for Jack Poole, who played a large role in bringing the Olympics to Vancouver. He died last week following a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer.

About 400 protesters earlier greeted the flame’s arrival by staging what they called a “five-ring circus” with a “Zombie March” — complete with costumes, drums and trombones — to the provincial legislature, where a concert was planned by Vancouver Games organizers to celebrate the completion of the Olympic flame’s first day on Canadian soil.

At the start, there was no sign of a disturbance and police officers dressed in yellow vests walked within the throng.

Tamara Herman, an organizer with the group No2010 Victoria, said whatever opponents’ specific objections to the Games, it all comes down to money.

“The reasons that we oppose the Games are very multifaceted. We oppose them because we see homelessness is a bigger priority than a two-week parade, we see health services is a bigger priority,” she told The Canadian Press. “Why have we decided to spend such an enormous amount of money on what is essentially a two-week party?”