When Bad Things Happen to Good Cities: Vancouver Becomes Canada’s Hate Crime Capital

Vancouver may have started 2010 on a high note with February’s winter Olympics, but the city is now in the news for a far less pleasant reason — hate crimes. I know, I was shocked too. Vancouver is the land of laid-back surfers and eco-friendly vegans. It’s arguably Canada’s most hip city, if only because it has such a fantastic mix of cultures and tastes. And yet, here we are naming it the hate crime capital of the country. What went wrong?

Let’s start with what we know for sure. Hate crimes against homosexuals more than doubled between 2007 and 2008, according to a Statistics Canada report released June 14^th. And while only (or rather, a still-too-high-but-relatively-better) 38 percent of racially and/or religiously-charged hate crimes involved violence, three quarters of those committed against gays and lesbians included violent behavior of some sort.

But let’s face the facts; the statistics are country-wide and not exclusively a Vancouver problem. The reason why Vancouver is taking so much heat on the issue has a lot to do with its reputation as a gay mecca, the sort of city where homosexuals feel safer reporting harassment and violence. In fact, the city even has a hate crime unit.

The gay community also has mayoral support. After two gay men were attacked outside their home on Saturday, June 12^th, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson stated that he was saddened, “by what clearly appears to be an incident of physical and verbal aggression against citizens for who they are.”

While I am sure the after-the-fact solidarity with the community is appreciated, it would be nice if these events ceased to exist. The gentlemen were beaten in the June 12^th attack after confronting people for urinating on the side of their apartment building. It doesn’t seem too much to ask that we not pee on their stoop, right? One thing led to another and violence erupted.

“There was a stream of really offensive language coming at us,” the victim told CTV News. “Being gay, fags, and other words I don’t want to repeat.” The man was beaten, bit and made to feel worthless. And though we’d like to say it was a one-time thing, statistics show that it’s a scene that plays out all over Canada. Vancouver and Hamilton, Ontario, reported the highest rates among Canada’s 10 largest cities, but hate crimes aren’t isolated to large metropolitan areas. In fact, rates were higher in several smaller Ontario cities.

I remember walking down the street in a pink belt in downtown London, Ontario. For some reason, I thought pink belts were cool. (I was 20, so cut me some slack!). I walked by a patio in a well-lit, well-maintained area and proceeded to cross the street. That’s when I started to hear echoes of taunts. “You’re a fag,” one guy said. “Your belt is gay,” said another. How a belt can be homosexual, I will never know. But the point is this: homophobia is everywhere, even in the safest little nook of my university-town.

Fortunately, I have never been confronted with a violent attack, or any sort of threatening moment for which I felt ill-equipped to handle. Living in Toronto, I feel pretty safe nearly all of the time.

Then I go and read studies like this one that tell me there were 271 reported hate crimes in Toronto in 2008. And now I’m not so sure.

Photo Credit: City of Vancouver