[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I was too young to remember the 1988 Olympics, but I was around Vancouver for 2010. The infrastructure that went in in the lead-up to those games is incredibly important to the GVRD. The Canada Line was absolutely necessary, they turned the Sea to Sky into an actual highway instead of a two-lane deathtrap (that I didn't mind actually because it was fun to drive but you know, objectively), and tons of other things you don't immediately think about. For example, they put a rink near the river in Richmond for curling. That whole area now is high-density, and apartments there rival the more expensive areas in downtown Vancouver, despite being nowhere near the urban core. Those kinds of injections of development really do push a city forward in a way that doesn't go away when the games leave.

Also, the games themselves were incredibly fun. Some of the best times I've had, those two weeks. Part of that was the good weather and the success of the Canadian athletes, but I think it would have been fantastic regardless. So I'd like to experience that again.

Third, it wasn't a major boondoggle or anything. You can argue whether VANOC's math is right when they said they broke even, but at minimum, you'd have to acknowledge that they did a fairly reasonable job of being smart with their dollars and not creating a massive shortfall. So the residents ended up getting a good deal on their tax dollar because of all the infrastructure they got.

All of this is by way of saying, I'm agnostic about the idea of hosting the Olympics. Will Calgary get the same deal from the Federal and Provincial governments that Vancouver did, get the same benefit returned from a similar investment from city residents? If so, I'm for it. If it doesn't look that way when the numbers are run, then I'll be against it. But comparing it to the arena, which is never going to be a good use of public dollars no matter what the project looks like, makes no sense to me. It's at least possible to do a winter olympics right. We've seen it out on the coast. It's just a question of whether something like that is realistic in the here and now.