Comments on: The Stanley Cup Riot (1994)

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 20:54:21 +0000

As someone that was there at an apartment watching the game at a friends apartment downtown I have very different memories of how the riot actually started than what’s stated.

By: Raymond Parker

Raymond Parker — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 16:20:49 +0000

On the evening of June 15, 1994 I rolled into a little place called 40 Mile Flats in the middle of nowhere on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway (37). It was Day 32 of a two month bicycle traverse of southern Alaska, Yukon and the length of British Columbia.
I’d spent the previous evening in Dease Lake, at the home of a local teacher, watching that Stanley Cup game. That lodging had been arranged by a teacher from the Tahltan School who I’d met in remote Telegraph Creek. I was happy to have a break from my tiny one person tent, so I played along, though I’m not a hockey fan.
40 Mile consisted of a couple of buildings, one housing a Café. It had been a long, 75Km day climbing out of the Stikine River Canyon so I elected to pitch my tent there and treat myself to a restaurant meal (a break from endless instant noodles — though I did choose the Spaghetti Bolognese from the menu).
In a corner, across the spartan room, there was a colour TV dialled in to the Vancouver evening news (via satellite, I presume). As I recorded in my journal, the scene on the TV, from the perspective of this remote and quiet part of BC was surreal.
“….the streets of Vancouver convulse in a riot of looting and mayhem. The video images are a surreal record of the previous evening’s mass-hysteria, as hockey hooligans—sore losers all—had poured out of the stadium to throw a public tantrum. Yet, the concerns of the south and the world outside seem far away from here, focused as I am on the ever-contracting world of this journey.”
Of course, as others note, there was a reprise of this madness in 2011.
I remain indifferent to, not so much the game, but the culture of hockey which seems to me to have violence embedded within it.

By: Angus McIntyre

Angus McIntyre — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 19:47:44 +0000

Our family had just moved here and I saw the 1966 Grey Cup riots downtown after the evening parade ended. Beer bottles were tossed from hotel windows and there was a paddy wagon shuttle service. The Sea Festival eventually ended due to unruly crowds. As a city bus driver I drove through the aftermath of the Gastown Riots. I rode my bike out to the Coliseum and heard the Rolling Stones perform from outside, and then watched mobs at Renfrew and Hastings throw Molotov cocktails at cars. The police were all at the Coliseum.

So where was I in 1994 on that night? In Toronto in Massey Hall at a concert celebrating 100 years to the day that it opened. Gordon Lightfoot was there.

By: Claire Heffernan

Claire Heffernan — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 17:25:11 +0000

Losing the hockey game was always the excuse to go ballistic but they sure looked to us like a bunch of hockey fan sore losers with the emphasis on “loser.” Shame.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 17:17:32 +0000

Can’t believe it has been 30 years. Those are not true hockey fans.

By: Loretta Houben

Loretta Houben — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 15:52:11 +0000

Complete lunatics. And I’ve never forgiven the Canucks for losing as both riots were on or just before my birthday. I haven’t liked hockey since these riots. I cannot understand lunatics.

By: Brad Williams

Brad Williams — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 12:46:54 +0000

Yes, that is why we cant have nice things in our city. It is usually outsiders, the have nots and never wills who cause the most problems. I think the number of troublemakers was a little higher in 2011.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 09:12:03 +0000

In 2011 my son and his friend were going downtown to an early movie. I knew what was going to happen if we did not win the hockey game. I told him that when they headed back home and saw any disturbance to get on whatever bus was coming by and get out of the downtown core. They walked down to catch their bus and looked down a street and saw smoke and police lights. They got on the 1st bus that came by and it took what felt like hours to get out of the DT core. He thanked me when he got home. The next day he saw a fellow from his school front and centre on the front page. He was so relieved that he listened to me.

By: Anthony Maw

Anthony Maw — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 06:53:21 +0000

Yeah I remember the Stanley Cup riots of both 1994 and 2011. The 1994 incident was small being isolated to around Robson and Thurlow, compared to 2011 where rioters vandlized and looted shops and burned cars as all over downtown.

By: Heather Lapierre

Heather Lapierre — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 04:37:28 +0000

My son was 16. His friends were calling him, asking what size jeans, etc. he wore. My son was 6’4″ – a big guy. I looked at him and told him there was no way he was going down there. Everyone knew there was going to be trouble, regardless of the outcome of the game. For once, he listened to me!

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 04:16:38 +0000

I was on Robson Street following the Canucks game 6 win. A much different, family oriented, jubilant and positive vibe. The following day I was on a downtown bus listening to two young men discuss which stores they wanted to loot following Game 7.

I was again on Robson Street following game 7 and it was incredibly tense and so very different. I watched as a young man rolled a flaming device into the crowd. I confronted him and he scattered only to return moments later with 2 friends in tow. I found the closest policeman and tried to tell him what I had just witnessed. He seemed scared silly and couldn’t focus on my words. Not long after I realized that the riot squad were on their way in and I wanted no part of that and quickly headed towards Stanley Park and did an end run around them and made my way home to Kitsilano. I woke up deeply ashamed of my city, but it really was just a small number of opportunistic hooligans.

By: Flavia Corbella

Flavia Corbella — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 02:02:15 +0000

The same type of goons did the same in 2011. Win or lose there was going to be a riot and unfortunately it started with those who travelled in from the burbs just like 1994.