With all eyes on Vancouver, why is B.C. Sports Hall of Fame closed?

Somebody somewhere must have known something. Surely, this all could have been avoided.

Article content

How to understand why the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame has been shuttered just as the world’s attention turns to our city?

Article content

The FIFA World Cup will be the biggest sporting event Vancouver has ever hosted — or the second biggest behind the 2010 Olympics, depending on which side of the fence you’re on — so why weren’t the challenges facing the Hall of Fame raised sooner? Why is it just shrugged shoulders, a mediocre casting of blame at, well … someone … that we’re getting here?

It’s cute that city council has weighed in with a probably-too-late offer to house some of the hall’s presentations.

It’s all very half-measures.

There should have been some forethought. We should be set to celebrate anew the likes of Christine Sinclair, Don Taylor, Dale Mitchell, Tony Waiters, Carl Valentine, Geri Donnelly, Andrea Neil, Domenic Mobilio and so many others, like Quene Yip and the 1933 Chinese Students team.

While FIFA has taken over B.C. Place, no one seemed to think about how we could make sure our local history stays proudly on display for everyone to see. Instead, it’s been boxed up and put in storage; a missed opportunity.

Article content

The Parliamentary Budget Office revealed this week that the 13 World Cup games this country is hosting will cost $82 million apiece. Were there not a few bucks to be spared from this mass subsidy to keep the hall running, either in the stadium or somewhere nearby? An actual plan, not some last-minute, bashed-together thing presented by a mayor who, once again, is in an election year and throwing out concepts left and right in an effort to muster good vibes?

If the B.C. Sports Hall’s leadership didn’t foresee this would be a big story, I’m not sure what they were thinking. It was a story during the women’s World Cup in 2015 when the hall was similarly closed. People noticed. It was a missed opportunity to put our sporting history on display at a key moment.

Of course, it would be talked about again here.

Word was inevitably going to get out: The hall gets booked for lots of things. People will have been calling up for months to make arrangements and will have been told the hall and its services are simply not available while this massive sporting event takes place — and it’s not because they’re too busy.

People would figure this out and would start to whisper, as they have.

This is just ludicrous stuff from the people who are meant to be stewards of our history.

Shame on them.

pjohnston@postmedia.com