Photo courtesy of: from osocio.org (http://osocio.org/message/struggling_single_moms_take_over_celebrity_news/)

To me, the mark of good writing is taking something that everyone is familiar with, and presenting it in such a way that it surprises the reader. When that also highlights the struggles of those living in poverty, it helps improve the lives of everyone. Take  Toronto’s Woodgreen Community Services’ recent ad campaign.  For the last 75 years, its goal has been to help those who are less fortunate in the Ontario area find their feet, and to give them a chance to find sustainable work and a healthy lifestyle.

The recent campaign has been for the Homeward Bound program, and is aimed at helping single mothers in disadvantaged areas earn college diplomas and start careers. But what makes this ad so effective? Well, simply: it breaks from tradition—and, as a result, is much more poignant. The whole focus of the ad campaign is showing us the real lives of single mothers—as if they were celebrity gossip.

Now, I don’t read much of the stuff, but even I can recognize that Woodgreen and DDB Canada have hit the nail perfectly on the head with their format. Huge garish headlines splashed across the page, ridiculous close up shots of items/locations, an absolutely fantastic T.V commercial mimicking “60 seconds” celebrity news updates that plague channels like MTV. Having such bright, over the top colours and tones to some appalling  situations creates such a strong contrast, and the effect is superbly powerful.

Denise Rossetto, the executive creative director at DDB Canada, had this to say on the ad campaign:

Our creative is a parody of popular celebrity media culture, but instead of celebrity-focused stories, it features hard-hitting headlines about struggling single mothers and the real hardships they face each day.  Learning about celebrities is fun, but we want people to recognize that there are many others who are in greater need of our attention and support.

By using this format, and using it to promote such serious matters, it brings into focus how flippant some of our major concerns can be. Ads like these that are so much more relatable make for a much stronger statement than any black and white montage set to heart-breaking music.

More Information about the project can be found on the Woodgreen Homepage, as well as Osocio.org

I remember when you did what you’re doing right now for the Phillies for the Jays. It was just last year. How could I forget? You were the reason—perhaps the only one—local fans continued to return to the Rogers Centre. The few bums that were in the seats were there for you, not for the team. When somebody had an extra ticket, the first question that anybody asked was, “Who’s pitching?” The only answer that meant anything was Doc Halladay. In a sports-mad city, you were the only thing that kept baseball relevant.

This season you’re ripping it up in Philadelphia, your first year in the National League, dominating the competition the same way you used to in Toronto. You’ve been on the hill four times so far and your record is a perfect 4-0. You already have two complete games and have given up a miserly 26 hits in 33 innings-pitched. Your ERA is under one. You’ve struck out 28 hitters and walked only three. There’s no doubt you’re the best pitcher in baseball right now and you’re probably the best player in the game, too.

The thing about you, though, Roy, is that you mean so much more to a ball club—and to a city, maybe even a country—than just what you produce. Everybody loves you for your humility and your blue-collar attitude. You’re a workhorse and a gentlemen. Players respect you, fans adore you. You may not be warm and cuddly, but your focus in unrivaled. Toronto couldn’t give you a chance to get what you ultimately wanted—a chance to win—so you moved on. It was the kind of break-up that was best for everyone involved.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t miss you every fifth day. Sure, the Jays got off to a hot start. But, really, they always do. We know they’re just a tease.

More so than any other sport, baseball is a pasttime. An American one at its heart, but there were times when the sandlot game gripped the whole country. I can remember the halcyon days when the SkyDome was packed to the rafters every day. When the team was loaded with players who had your competitive fire, Roy, people who had your character. Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Kelly Gruber, Pat Borders, Paul Molitor. The list goes on. I remember how not just the city of Toronto but the entire country got behind the team. I remember living in Vancouver and watching as the Jays brought the World Series to Canada for the first time.

The Blue Jays could be called a national pasttime then. They created conversations across the country the way hockey and curling do. People watched for the sport itself and for the emotion that came with it. Today, Torontoians watch baseball to drink beer in the sunshine. Today, there seem to be more empty seats than filled ones at the Rogers Centre. Today, I couldn’t imagine a 10-year old in Vancouver getting behind the Jays.

You were the only thing that reminded me of those days, Roy. You might not have played on those teams, but you symbolize their greatest virtues. You were a bridge that connected the good ol’ days of the past to the sad-sack days of the present. But you still made the game—or at least the games where you were pitching—worth watching. I wish you luck, Doc, because you deserve better.

Baseball in Canada just isn’t the same. And, honestly, I don’t think it will be for a while.

Toronto's Rogers Centre (formerly Skydome), built with public funds and later sold off to private business for a pittance. A major league sports team is often assumed to be more economically stimulating than actual results attest. Creative Commons photo by Mike Babcock.

The National Hockey League playoffs open this week and the abundance of emotion-laden storylines are sure to captivate a significant portion of the the Canadian sporting public’s hearts. But while three Canadian squads—the Vancouver Canucks, the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators—vie for Lord Stanley’s coveted Cup, there’s another, less exciting, story unfolding that probably should captivate our minds, even those of the non sports-adoring variety.

Tomorrow, the city council of Glendale, Arizona will vote to approve the arena-lease agreements for the two bids put forward to purchase the suburban community’s NHL hockey club, the Phoenix Coyotes. But, as the Globe and Mail reported this weekend, even if the leading bid, submitted by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reisdorf, is approved the lease agreement may not survive. In an interesting twist of fate, a lawyer for the Goldwater Institute recently announced that the conservative watchdog group won’t hesitate to take the city of Glendale to court if it appears the agreements are in violation of Arizona laws against public subsidies for private corporations.

The concern for Goldwater is a piece of the Reisdorf “memorandum of understanding” that calls for local taxpayers and businesses to foot up to $165-million of the purchase price and annual operating losses. While this sort of stipulation isn’t unusual in the standard agreements between sports franchises and host cities, it is unusual that a powerful watchdog is calling both parties out.

For too long, the public has dogmatically accepted the connection politicians and team owners like to tout between sports franchises and local economic development. Massive public subsidies are regularly given to billion-dollar sports operations under the guise that they will bring an influx of new economic activity to the local community. This year alone, Winnipeg, Quebec City and Hamilton have all, at one point or another, flirted with the idea of bringing a professional hockey team home. And each has made claims about the economic benefit a pro franchise would bring. However, the problem is that justification is demonstrably false. There is, in fact, no economic rationale for publicly funded sports teams and stadiums.

According to Andrew Zimbalist, a prominent sports economist at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, all independent scholarly research on the economic impact of sports teams and stadiums has come to the same conclusion: there isn’t any. As he told Stephen J. Dubner on the New York Times Freakonomics blog, contrary to the rhetoric often aired by local politicians and sports teams owners, “one should not anticipate that a team or a facility by itself will either increase employment or raise per capita income in a metropolitan area.”

The economics behind this are complicated, but, generally, three principles hold. First, sports stadiums rarely create new capital: consumer spending on sport is almost always a redistribution of existing dollars in the local economy. People don’t spend money they wouldn’t have otherwise; they simply spend some their entertainment budget on local teams instead of something else. Second, much of the income generated by the team ends up leaking out of the local economy. Millionaire owners and players have their savings tied-up in world money markets and often live and spend their money outside of the host city. Third, and perhaps most importantly, host governments typically contributes close to two-thirds of the financing for the facility’s construction, usually takes on obligations for additional expenditures and routinely guarantee a significant amount of revenue. In other words, it’s the taxpayers that bear most of the risk—not the multimillion-dollar franchises that make a city home.

That’s not to say there aren’t perfectly good reasons for cities to host big-time sports teams or build world-class sports stadiums. It’s just that the supposed “positive economic impact” of a sports franchise shouldn’t factor into local governments’ decisions. Cities spend millions of dollars on cultural activities that they don’t anticipate to yield additional revenue. Sports teams can have a powerful cultural impact on a community and are integral part of most cities’ social fabric. If local residents value sport they are obviously welcome to allocate public dollars toward it. In fact, I, for one, hope they do. But sports teams and stadiums should be sold as a source of civic pride—not as a source of economic development.

No doubt, March Madness is a sporting spectacle to behold (the CIS Final 8, not so much). The tournament is so widely watched that Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. has made it an annual habit to calculate the hit the American economy takes as men and women across the States stop working and start consuming nothing but sport. This year, the consultancy firm predicts a gargantuan US$1.8 billion will be lost in productivity. CBS, the broadcast rights holder for the event, even created a “Boss Button” to accompany its online stream of the Final Four. The gadget, which counted 2.77 million unique users last year, instantly mutes the sound and replaces the tournament feed with a very intricate, very elaborate, spreadsheet in a bid to fool any suspicious supervisors that might be lurking nearby.

But the real loss that accompanies March Madness isn’t economic. It’s actually educational. Sure, it’s fun to think about people sneaking around the office, using the Boss Button to minimize work and maximize play. But it’s not so fun to contemplate the tournament’s darker underbelly, one that is hidden beneath a veneer of charming Cinderella stories and heart-warming anecdotes about teamwork, dedication and overcoming obstacles.

Every year, Dr. Richard Lapchick at the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports releases an eye-opening study on the graduation rates of Final Four teams that coincides with the start of the tournament. The findings are alarming, but perhaps unsurprising. Although NCAA Division 1 universities and colleges are graduating players at an increasing rate, the overall results are abysmal. Only six sides in this year’s tournament graduated their entire squad over the study’s six-year period, and a whopping 12 teams had a graduation rate of less than 40 per cent, including number-one seeded Kentucky (which graduated 31 per cent of its players). If U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had his way, those 12 teams would have been banned from play this year. A former college player himself, Duncan recently told the media: “I grew up with too many players who played on a successful team, who no one cared about their educational well-being. And when their playing careers were done, they struggled.”

What’s even more unsettling, however, is that the situation is markedly worse when it comes to African American players. While 79 per cent of tournament teams graduate 70 per cent of their white players, only 31 per cent graduate 70 per cent of their black players. In Kentucky’s case, each and every one of of the Wildcats Caucasian athletes graduated—but the same can be said for only 18 per cent of their black teammates. And the racial disparity reflected in this year’s study is by no means an anomaly. Earlier in the decade, UCLA, a perennial college basketball powerhouse, failed to graduate a single black player for five straight years and just two years ago an overwhelming majority of top-ranked teams graduated less than 25 percent of their African-American stars.

The NCAA often propagates the myth that college hoops are the last stop on the fast track to riches and glory in professional sports. But, as Lapchick points out, it’s statistically more likely for an African-American ballplayer to become a doctor or a lawyer than it is to make it to the NBA. What’s so problematic is that college ball players legally can’t be paid to play, while the universities they play for rake in billions. The players’ compensation is supposed to be a high-quality post-secondary education—something that, clearly, a shocking number of them aren’t getting.

The CIS Final 8 tournament may be considered a bore (though, I must admit, I follow it with a near-religious fervour—sadly, my Thunderbirds lost to Saskatchewan in Sunday’s championship), but Canadian institutions at least attempt to provide their athletes with a proper education. Of course, there are athletes at our schools that are just along for the ride. There always will be when it comes to college sports. But, in general, scholastic standards are higher and big-name institutions certainly aren’t reaping massive financial rewards off the backs of their students.

A handful of CIS varsity programs have recently made a concerted push for NCAA status, including the University of British Columbia. The profile that would come with a Canadian institution playing in the upper echelon of U.S. college athletics would  undeniably be huge. But for all the hoopla, hype and hysterics that March Madness brings, there remains a particularly nagging question that still needs to be asked: At what cost?

Canada's women's Olympic hockey team pose with their gold medals after the winning game.

Guest blogger Canice Leung recently wrote in this space that Canada’s “national sport,” our beloved ice hockey, has became too elitist, too expensive and too inaccessible to maintain its position near to the top of the Canadian cultural hierarchy. Sparked by a fiery debate on Twitter the day before, her words were thought-provoking and insightful and her column provided an valuable perspective—one that those of us closely connected with the game often forget. And though I agree with the spirit of Leung’s argument, I have have to take issue with her conclusion, that hockey does not and should not represent this country.

She is right to point out that sport in Canada is a multimillion-dollar industry and that in certain respects it has become increasingly elitist and inaccessible. As Leung notes, higher-end ice skates alone can cost upwards of $600 and that’s just one piece of the bounty of expensive gear required to the play the sport at any level. Also, rinks are expensive to maintain, so ice-time is scarce and registration fees for youth hockey leagues are exorbitant. Just last week, the Greater Toronto Hockey League, the minor hockey association for the city that is supposed to the most diverse on earth, announced it would be doubling its fees next year. All the GTHL’s 512 teams will now pay $2000 to register a 16-player squad in order to cover the $500,000 hit the league expects to take with the introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario in July.

As Leung argued, circumstances like these make any sport—or any endeavour, for that matter—self-stratifying. Sure, there are bursaries, hand-me-downs and other equalizing measures out there. But with decreased accessibility comes increased elitism. More immigrants and second-generation Canadians may be filling roster spots in the game’s professional ranks. Yet there are also fewer opportunities for the less affluent to have a shot at playing the game at its highest level. For Leung, that means that when hockey is “put on a cultural pedestal, it demands a fairness and accessibility that befits the morals of the country it represents.”

But, for me, it’s still the national game.

The reason hockey needs to be more a more accessible and more equitable sport is precisely because it’s so deeply interwoven in our collective identity. Opening the sport to a wider, more diverse sample of Canadians will not only increase its already massive audience—10.3 million Canadians tuned in to the Olympic quarter-final against Russia; 21.5 million, nearly two-thirds of the country, for the gold medal match-up with the United States—and support other values we hold close, but also deepen the talent pool and make us that much better at, that much more connected, to our cherished national pastime.

When Leung writes that “in modern-day Canada, the idea that the sport represents us all seems anachronistic,” I think she may be missing the point. In today’s world, there is nothing that is going to perfectly represent us all. Hockey is for some, not for others. But the shared experience of sport can unite us and hockey is that shared experience for Canadians. The beauty of sport is that you don’t have to play it to take part in it—the Olympics final the perfect example of just that. It’s the overwhelming emotion and excitement coupled with hockey’s rich folklore that brings people together in one collective act. The fact that so many of us tune it on a nightly basis is what makes it ours.

Granted, it’s a shame the women’s game doesn’t get the attention it deserves—but that is true of all female sports and Canadian women’s hockey is probably in a better state than most. Plus, that culture is rapidly changing, particularly at the amateur level where more young and talented female athletes are playing competitive sports than ever before. They, too, share in the collective hockey experience and are increasingly becoming an active part in shaping it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t apply a critical lens to our national game, giving it a free pass simply because we love it. More access and more representation will only make our game bigger, better and more of a positive force in shaping Canada’s culture. Leung’s point is an important one and very well taken. But there’s still something distinctly Canadian about that good ol’ hockey game.

Stills from Tim Tebow's Focus on the Family ad that aired during the Super Bowl.

In all the hoopla following the New Orleans Saints’ momentous victory over the Indianapolis Colts in last week’s Super Bowl, an important piece of the biggest day in North American sports seemed to disappear all-too-quickly from the collective consciousness. With the pervasive and nauseating hyperbole around the significance of the Saints’ win in Hurricane Katrina’s wake and the excitement over the start of the Olympics in Vancouver Friday night, the fact that CBS ran a 30-second, blatantly pro-life advertisement funded by Focus on the Family in the middle of the most-watched event in television history appeared completely lost on the sports-loving general public.

The controversial commercial involved Tim Tebow, the former Florida Gator quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner and staunch evangelical Christian, alongside his mother Pam, speaking out against abortion. Ostensibly, though, the ad is just a mother and son sharing their story. Pam stares into the camera and laments that little Timmy “almost didn’t make it into this world,” holding up a picture of her “miracle baby” with a football cradled between his legs. The bit ends with Tebow tackling his mother and the pair posing for a heartfelt hug as Focus on the Family’s website is splashed across the screen.

The spot seems relatively innocuous―until it’s taken in context. First, Focus on the Family is a frightening organization. According to People for the American Way, it’s “anti-choice, anti-gay and against sex education curricula that are not strictly abstinence-only.” And, if that’s not enough, its president is the ultra right-wing nut-job James Dobson, who infamously said, in speaking of Roe v. Wade, that “the biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court.” Also, when the details of the Tebows tale are taken into account, the ad’s content becomes unavoidably political. As the story goes, Pam became pregnant with her fifth child while on a missionary trip to the Philippines. She was gravely ill at the time and doctors warned that giving berth would likely kill her. But she ignored her physician’s advice, choosing instead to stay true to her pro-life beliefs and―voila!―an All-American football player was born. The real message is obvious: Have an abortion and kill the next great college quarterback!

But as odious and ignorant as that position is, that’s the price we gladly pay for free speech. Tebow is inserting himself into a conversation that goes beyond the Xs and Os of the playing field, something too few athletes do. Fair enough. Good for him. The real problems with the ad are how utterly hypocritical and irresponsible CBS was in airing it and the absolutely ridiculous conversation it produced in the sports pages of North American newspapers.

CBS has had a longstanding policy against airing so-called “advocacy ads” during the Super Bowl, even those that implicitly endorse one side of a public debate. Though Focus on the Family is quick to point out that there was no mention of either abortion or pro-life ideology in the ad, the tacit anti-abortion stance is unmistakable. The organization’s contention that the spot simply supports its “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” tagline―whatever that means―is as laughable as it is insulting. Shelling out millions of dollars for a Super Bowl promo just to remind everybody that family is gosh darn great? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

CBS has also repeatedly used the policy to reject overtures from other advocacy groups―including PETA, the United Church of Christ and MoveOn.org. According to EdgeofSports.com’s David Zirin, this year the network even turned away an ad from a gay online dating service called mancrunch.com because, presumably, its “implied endorsement” was just too strong. Given that the Super Bowl is the largest sports event in North America and a hugely influential cultural force, that CBS would contravene its own policy and give precious airtime to―so it seems―radically right-wing political institutions only is deeply troubling.

Unfortunately, this point was largely missed by the mainstream sports media, who were too busy complaining about the intrusion of politics on their beloved pasttime or slobbering all over Tebow for his supposedly courageous stand. Of course, Tebow is welcome to use the platform sport provides to express his convictions. Too often sport’s reach is wasted and its political implications ignored because athletes are expected to “shut up and play.” But to act as if Tebow is a social crusader and locate him in the tradition of athlete activists like Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommy Smith, as some commentators did, is embarrassing. Tebow is now the face of a rich and powerful American political organziation; Ali was sentenced to a five-year prison term. Tebow has been roundly treated as a hero for publicizing his views;  Carlos and Smith were demonized by their country after raising their fists at the ’68 Olympics. The young quarterback gave up nothing for his beliefs; the other three men sacrificed everything.

Even putting ideology aside, it’s a shame that when a prime-time athlete like Tebow finally does stand up and speak out, the resultant conversation so egregiously misses the point.

Vancouver 2010 Anti-Olympic mascot Bitey the Bedbug. Photo by Lotus Johnson.

On January 11, a coalition of advocates in Vancouver’s downtown eastside voiced a cheeky cry for Stephen Harper to prorogue the upcoming 2010 Winter Games. Though more marketing ploy than genuine call to action, the move is nonetheless a signal of things to come. In the few remaining days before the Olympic torch arrives in Vancouver, protestors have vowed to ramp up anti-Olympic activity. And, of course, the IOC, VANOC and even the City of Vancouver will be doing whatever they can to stop them.

But just as the call to prorogue packs more bark than bite, Olympics protests scheduled for the lead up to—and during—the Games will likely amount to little more than well-meaning disruptions. The window for real change on anything Olympics-related closed a long time ago, and Vancouver’s infuriating “Olympic Bylaws” make doing anything remotely radical prohibitive. The spectacle that comes with the Olympics offers an important opportunity to raise awareness for the plight of Canada’s poorest postal code, Native land claims and the egregiously irresponsible use of public dollars that is the 2010 Games—but grassroots advocates already need to start looking to the future. Yes, the Olympics is here now. But what happens to that progressive momentum once the Games has come and gone?

When I spoke to the Olympic Resistance Network’s Harsha Walia in her cluttered downtown eastside office over the holidays, she called the Olympics a “social catalyst.” Activists of all stripes, with varied missions and agendas, have come together in protest. The problem, though, is that Vancouver 2010 has given birth to the organizations at the front of the anti-Olympics movement right now—No 2010, 2010 Watch and ORN—as the 16-day event comes and goes, so too will they. Other established advocacy groups have continued to champion their own causes, using the Games as a flagpole to rally around, and it is the efficacy of their efforts in the Olympics’ wake that will present a chance for actual reform.

Because the real legacy of the Games won’t be the revamped Sea-to-Sky Highway or new sports infrastructure in Richmond. And it certainly won’t be the 250 units of social housing the city has promised from the freshly constructed athletes village. The real legacy will be debt. Crippling public debt. According to 2010 Watch’s Christopher Shaw, the Olympics are quickly shaping up to be Vancouver’s very own “Big Owe.”

And that debt could put more pressure on existing grassroots groups, especially when funds are cut and the world’s eyes aren’t on Vancouver. Sport can be a powerful platform for awareness—but it also comes with a short attention span. It’ll be difficult for the organizations that have been so vocal in the run up to the Games to maintain the force of their voice once the Olympic spotlight has moved on.

However, with another large-scale sports event taking place on Canadian soil in five years—the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto—there exists a ready-made excuse to preserve the cohesion and unity of purpose the anti-Olympics movement has created. If the fervent opposition to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and the trepidation around Rio receiving the same Games is any indication, the public is increasingly aware that global sports competitions are not the benign, benevolent forces they’re billed to be. The world is starting to understand who really reaps the benefits and who really pays the costs. And, perhaps, that is where Olympic detractors should be looking. Perhaps that could be the 2010 Games’ “other” legacy.