Vancouver 2010 Olympic Village Photowalk
by Roland Tanglao

Vancouver has been long seen as one of the best cities on the whole Earth in which to live. Even this year, Vancouver scored the highest from all the American cities in the prestigious quality of living study by Mercer. And yet it is getting negative international press coverage (From heaven to hell: 18 die as drugs war rages on streets of Vancouver, British Columbia or Colombia?). Why is that?

For the first three months of 2009 alone, Vancouver (2.7 mil inhabitants) has witnessed 45 shootings, 17 of them fatal. That’s 6.3 violent deaths per 1 mil inhabitants. Compared to Toronto (5.1 mil inhabitants), there was 11 murders in the same period, which works out at 2.2 violent deaths per 1 mil inhabitants - almost three times less!

(Vancouver: Olympics in the Shade of Violence? continued...)