In the first decade of the 2000s, from around 2005 onward, activists, anarchists, and other troublemakers in and around Vancouver started organizing opposition to the 2010 Winter Olympics. We saw the Games as a massive wealth transfer—millions of dollars funneled into a two-week party—while the city faced urgent needs for social housing, medical services, and programs for the poor. Beyond that, the Olympics meant large-scale environmental destruction, particularly the highway expansion to Whistler, where many skiing events would take place.

The Beginnings of the Anti-Olympic Movement

The resistance kicked off in a big way during the unveiling of the Olympic Countdown Clock, when artist and activist Gord Hill disrupted the ceremony. From there, the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) was formed, grounded in anti-capitalist and anti-colonial politics. Its slogan? “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.” The movement called out Canada’s ongoing theft of Indigenous lands and its role in sustaining the colonial project.

The cops were so freaked out they showed up at my office over a video I made called Five Cock Rings of Death—I shit you not. Meanwhile, they were also harassing anti-Olympic activists in their homes and workplaces, trying to intimidate and silence anyone who dared say no to this colonial spectacle. And it wasn’t just local organizers getting heat—even Amy fucking Goodman from Democracy Now! got harassed at the Canadian border. Cops detained her, grilled her about whether she was planning to speak about the Olympics during her visit to Vancouver.

In the months leading up to the Games, activists disrupted the Olympic torch relay and protested major infrastructure projects like the Canada Line. When the Games arrived, anarchists and radicals organized the Heart Attack march, aimed at clogging the arteries of capitalism—literally blocking roads leading to Whistler. Dressed in black bloc, they marched down East Hastings, eventually smashing the windows of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a deeply symbolic act against the corporation’s historic role in the colonization of Canada and the genocide of Indigenous peoples.

David Eby and the Betrayal

At the time, the Olympic Resistance Network had a legal defense team led by David Eby, then head of the BC Civil Liberties Association. Initially, many were grateful for his support. But after the property destruction at the Hudson’s Bay Company, Eby went to the media to denounce the protesters, including some of the very people his group was supposed to be defending. This betrayal fractured the movement. Volunteers from his legal support group distanced themselves, viewing his statements as unethical and potentially putting activists in legal jeopardy.

The Vancouver Media Co-op and the Pie Incident

Amid all this, we founded the Vancouver Media Co-op—an independent media center that covered the anti-Olympic resistance. We opened a space in the Downtown Eastside, welcoming independent journalists from around the world to document the protests. One of our main venues was VIVO Media Arts, a video production center that refused to take Olympic money, standing firm against the Games.

One night, we held an event featuring David Eby, Chris Shaw (author of Five Ring Circus), and Dawn Paley, co-founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op. I was there to present a video I had produced for It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine.

As people were settling in, an activist forcefully pied David Eby in the face. Now, Eby is a towering guy—over six feet tall—while the activist was much shorter, so they really had to reach to make it count. It was hilarious. Pieing is meant to humiliate, and it worked—Eby had to walk to the bathroom, pie dripping down his face, before coming back to face an extremely hostile audience.

When it was my turn to introduce the film, I pointed out how unusual it was to be directly confronting a politician I was criticizing in my videos—usually, they were far away. Eby shot me a death glare that could have cut me in half. The video outright called him a motherfuckin traitor (about 8 minutes into the video), and as it played, I watched him squirm. The audience wasn’t any kinder—when Eby had to speak, people heckled him relentlessly, and Dawn Paley grilled him over his betrayal.

The Aftermath

Fast forward years later, and David Eby is now the Premier of British Columbia. While serving as Attorney General, he oversaw police crackdowns on activists at the Fairy Creek blockades and Wet’suwet’en resistance camps, further proving that even those once close to our movements can become our enemies.

The Legacy of 2010

The anti-Olympic movement reignited the debate on the diversity of tactics. Anarchists and radicals successfully made the case for why militant resistance was necessary, most notably in the debate between Harsha Walia and Derrick O’Keefe—where Harsha absolutely dismantled O’Keefe’s weak arguments. This set the tone for radical politics in Canada throughout 2010.

And this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for the next piece in this series, where we’ll dive into what happened later that year—the firebombing of a Royal Bank of Canada branch and the anti-G20 protests in Toronto.