Blown away

Wow!

The winds were so strong in Vancouver today that they ripped a hole in the dome at BC Place stadium causing its inflatable roof to collapse.

This may not seem like a big deal to many people but BC Place has been a part of my life for a long time. I saw the first concert ever staged there - David Bowie, backed up by Peter Gabriel and the Tubes. I've seen Simon and Garfunkel there, a number of football games including last year's Grey Cup, and for more than half my life it's been a dominant feature of the city skyline.

People forget that when the stadium was built, it was a feat of modern engineering...a domed stadium with a roof held up by nothing more than air, really. It became the centerpiece of the Expo 86 site and helped bring Vancouver to the world's attention.

Even though it's time has passed and it's long been supplanted by other, much more modern stadia such as the SkyDome in Toronto and Seattle's Safeco Field, it will always hold a place in my heart.

Hope they can fix it. They're probably looking at a lot of needles and thread.

The weather in the Lower Mainland has been almost as whacky as Vancouver politics this year. Record setting snow, record setting rain, record setting winds...half the trees in Stanley Park down, flooding all over, power outages for up to a week in some areas.

It sucks. The generally temperate climate is one of the reasons that Vancouver is a so much nicer place to live than other large Canadian cities. Torontonians must be laughing their asses off at us, the bastards.