The sad, painful truth about the Vancouver rioters’ true identities

by Gary Mason
Globe and Mail

While police and politicians continue to lay the blame for this week’s Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver on professional anarchists and hardened thugs with deep-seated criminal tendencies, the blogosphere and social networks such as Facebook have been revealing a much more uncomfortable truth.

Many of those who participated in the riot were not these types of people at all. They were, in many instances, the sons and daughters of good, upstanding citizens who today must still be in shock over what they’ve learned.

The picture of a young man attempting to set a police cruiser on fire by lighting a rag stuffed in its gas tank has received widespread Internet attention. He’s been identified as an academic all-star who was supposed to be heading to the U.S. in fall on a water polo scholarship.

Water Polo Canada announced Friday that the 17-year-old has been suspended as a member of the junior men’s national team. He has apparently turned himself into police, although the Vancouver Police Department refused to confirm this.

The parents of another 17-year-old high school student from Burnaby, B.C., forced their son to give himself up after a photo surfaced that showed him looting a high-end fashion store. A teacher at an area high school told me Friday that students were abuzz over shots posted on Facebook of classmates riding home on the Canada Line holding items obtained during the looting.

By the time the investigation into this week’s Stanley Cup riot wraps up, there will be dozens of people implicated in the disturbance who do not fit the narrow profile of the riot perpetrator that public authorities have created. The fact is, it’s easier to blame hooligans and professional nihilists for what happened than confront the more disturbing possibility that under unique conditions that wonderful teenaged boy who lives next door is capable of coming unglued.

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