The Tyee Podcast: What the World Cup Leaves Behind

Note: Episode transcripts may contain errors. Always check the corresponding audio before quoting any part of the transcript.

Harrison Mooney
For the past year, I’ve been under the impression that Vancouver was hosting the entire FIFA World Cup. All 12 groups. All 104 games. All of the diehard supporters from every great footballing nation at once. I’ve since learned it’s more of a group effort. Some games are here. Some games are in the States. Some are in Mexico. My first thought was: if we’re sharing the load with the whole continent, then why is it costing so much money?
I don’t mean to sound negative. After all, the atmosphere in Vancouver since the World Cup began has been electric. But for some residents, the World Cup is not all fun and games.
This is the The Tyee podcast. I'm your host, Harrison Mooney. Every episode we dive deeper into the stories shaping the West Coast. Because Canada needs more B.C.
Unlike me, Tyee reporter Katie Hyslop has been keeping a close eye on the World Cup since well before it started. They’ve been keeping an eye on what happens to a city when the beautiful game comes to town. And how the city can stand up for its citizens — or leave them behind. Stay with us.

Harrison Mooney
Are you watching the World Cup?

Katie Hyslop
No, I'm sorry, I'm not.

Harrison Mooney
You know what this podcast episode is about?

Katie Hyslop
I do. It's, it's kind of funny that I am the World Cup person you're bringing in. I live within the two kilometre zone, so I get to see a lot of the parades and stuff, the fans.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, so I was reading about this in your story, the two kilometre game zone.

Katie Hyslop
Yes.

Harrison Mooney
What is the point of having that? Like, why would you identify this zone?

Katie Hyslop
So that zone, in some cases, is where roads will actually be shut down on game day in order to facilitate the mostly foot traffic going to BC Place, but it's also where bylaws have changed temporarily within the zone. Also, the 100 metre zone around the PNE is also worth the supply. So several bylaws have changed temporarily during the game time, and there are fines ranging from $250 to $1,000 for infractions.

Harrison Mooney
Just within the game zone.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, yeah,

Harrison Mooney
Man, I love stuff like that, like the just the regulatory flexibility that suddenly shows up when the city wants it to be there, because, like, like obviously every city, there are all these things that need to be done, and things the citizenry has been asking for, and the municipality will just say, "Oh, well, we can't, we don't have the budget, or "we couldn't get the votes, or it's tied up in some kind of bureaucratic red tape. And then an event like the World Cup comes to town, and suddenly all the rules can be changed right away, just for them, and there's money for more police, and suddenly temporary structures are allowed, but you know, only for some people, some for me, not for you. Yeah, I think you said it best. If cities can move quickly for FIFA, they should be able to move quickly and fairly for their residents too.

Katie Hyslop
I didn't say that, somebody else did.

Harrison Mooney
That wasn’t you, that was somebody else?

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, that was somebody else.

Harrison Mooney
Oh no.

Katie Hyslop
But I don't think they're wrong. $729 million, sorry, is what we're paying for this World Cup, and I think it's over 250 million of that is from the city in a year when we're, zero means zero, so for people who don't understand what that means, that's zero property tax increase this year, and therefore lots of cuts, which the city is not officially calling cuts but reductions, savings, things like wondering whether or not we have lifeguards,

Katie Hyslop
That was up in the air, but it's okay for the city to put in hundreds of millions of dollars into seven games of soccer, but I mean, go Canada.

Harrison Mooney
I mean yeah, there's seven pretty good games of soccer.

Katie Hyslop 5:57] Yeah. I have to admit, the enthusiasm is infectious, sort of similar to the Olympics. Like, I had a lot of questions and criticisms of the Olympics.

Katie Hyslop
But then also it's very hard to stay sour-faced when you're watching all these people be really happy.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, this is kind of where I come down on all of these things. you kind of read about what's going on under the surface, or or what this means for politics, and our needs as citizens being met, and I'm outraged, but I also really like sports, and I love the World Cup. I wrote a culture piece for us, and the personal stakes of this World Cup for me, right? Like, I'm Ghanaian, and I'm adopted, so I wasn't really able to connect with that heritage, and there aren't really a lot of opportunities for me to just kind of be Ghanaian, out in the world, and just like, yeah, I'm cheering for Ghana today, and I mean, this time I get to introduce my kids to that, like, we're Ghanaian, we can cheer for Ghana, and you know, and then kind of go from there, like, well, we're also African, we can cheer for all the African countries, and you know the joke, but it's also just the truth. Is eventually it's like, and we're German, so there's still there's still a team for us to cheer for, even in the semifinals. You know, it's it's funny because I like, I've really used this World Cup so far as an opportunity to talk like geography with them, and history with them, like I'll save FIFA's historic corruption for later, but Europe's historic corruption, that is a right now conversation.

Katie Hyslop

Yeah, that probably plays more into their everyday life than FIFA. FIFA can, they can wait to find out how troubling FIFA can be.

Harrison Mooney
Sorry, children, some of these governing bodies are suspect, but yeah, I guess like I always wonder if it's hypocritical for me to be aware of these kind of structural systemic problems that are once again on display here, but also get as into the World Cup as I am right now. Can you maybe tell me if I'm a bad person?

Katie Hyslop
I mean, if you were a bad person, I'm probably a bad person in other ways. I feel like we are all compromised in— and maybe this is just an excuse — but I feel like we're all compromised in any sort of major entertainment thing that we're into. Even going to concerts, how much money am I giving to Ticketmaster? Loving horror movies, like we could dissect all the issues watching people die.

Harrison Mooney
I did an interview with a scholar of settler colonial, like violence in horror, and she was pointing out that if a black character appears on screen in a horror movie, they'll die 40 per cent of the time. Which is a lot, but also it's my favorite genre of films, so I'm, yeah, I'm compromised there too, just a bundle of contradictions over here.

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, I mean, if we all threw up our arms and said, there's nothing to be done about this, might as well enjoy the soccer, then. Yeah, there's probably a problem with all of us. But you, as an individual person, I would have a hard time wagging my finger at you for enjoying soccer.

Harrison Mooney
Well, I'm glad then that you are not enjoying soccer. Thank you for standing up for us. Yeah, I feel like this is also like that's just kind of peak, Tyee you know. We always joke around here about Tyee sports, and our, and our sports articles are not ever about sports, you know? I mean, they're about, yeah, human rights violations, and and bylaw infractions, yeah, and in the case of this one, you've written a bunch of these stories, and the new rules and regulations, can you tell me about some of the, like, the kind of the other ways FIFA has been changing our lives and changing the rules here in Vancouver?

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, so when it comes down to those bylaws, there were seven bylaws that were temporarily changed from May 13 to July 20, which is the game. The first game here wasn't until June 13. That kicked in almost a month before the first game actually happened, because they had a lot of infrastructure to introduce. If you've been on some main thoroughfares in downtown Vancouver during game time, you'll see that a lot of them are blocked off with big, those big saw horse looking things that they bring in. So, yeah, one of the one of the rules that changed was signage. FIFA has very strict signage rules, so any sign that someone puts up in their business or their residence that mentions FIFA, that mentions the World Cup, that has pictures of World Cup emblems or images of the trophy could be subjected to a fine.

Harrison Mooney
Really?

Katie Hyslop
Yes, this is why some bars are hosting viewing parties with some very vague language about what they're actually viewing on TV.

Harrison Mooney
Right, it's a sports viewing party, an international sports viewing party.

Katie Hyslop
Exactly, exactly. So, bylaw officers can enter your business or your residence. With the residence that you have to have the owner's permission, a warrant, or it has to be a safety risk in order to actually go into someone's home. But for your residents, you get, or, sorry, for your business, you get 24 hours notice before they come inside and take it down for you.

Harrison Mooney
Okay. Well, that's good, I guess. Better than no notice.

Katie Hyslop
I guess. Yeah, that's true. It's better than no notice. There is some gray area around some signage, because the ban also includes any ambush marketing, quote unquote, or signage that blocks traffic or creates litter. So, ambush marketing, I think, would be like standing on the Dunsmuir viaduct and throwing out flyers. But bylaw officers, as the city explained to council last fall, by law officers had the discretion to make their own judgments, so one councillor, Pete Fry, was a little worried that, like, punk bands who had anti-FIFA shows might get fined, for example. And again, the answer they got sort of was like, well, bylaw officers will use their discretion.

Harrison Mooney
Right, we’ll see.

Katie Hyslop
There's no food vendors allowed within the two kilometre zone, unless they have a permit, and I know that Pivot Legal Society was concerned that that might impact people in the Downtown East Side who were doing street level vending. We don't know yet if that's happened. Our noise bylaws have also changed, so noise can now happen 24/7 within that two kilometre zone, if it's for cleaning up, maintenance of game sites, or broadcasting. So I guess if you wanted to do your FIFA world broadcast at midnight in the street, that would be fine. And graffiti removal must happen within 24 hours.

Harrison Mooney
24 hours?

Katie Hyslop
Yes, which the Chinatown Business Improvement Association told me was not reasonable. We first did the story about that, but they also think that the city will work with them versus using that as your first cudgel, but it's $1,000 fine if you don't remove graffiti that has anything to do with FIFA or hate speech, but yeah, 24 hours seems quite quick, so again the gray area of how bylaw officers will enforce that, and then the last thing is not so much bylaws that have changed, these have stayed the same, but there were fears from Pivot and from the BC Civil Liberties Association. When I spoke to them, could face higher reinforcement because of the greater presence of police in the game zone, which there are a lot of cops around. So that's one of them, is the bylaw that prevents you from setting up tents in parks during the day, if you're unhoused, bylaws that require sidewalks to stay clear could be used to move people who are precariously housed, especially in the downtown Eastside, people like to hang out outside because they don't have living rooms. And then POWER, which is a grassroots police watchdog, sort of in the neighborhood, has been reporting an uptick in cops enforcing a variety of bylaws in the neighborhood, but since last year, so they're not sure how much has to do with the World Cup coming, or how much is like now the VPD has a new district headquarters in the now town east side, and so there's an even more police presence down there than usual.

Harrison Mooney
Right, So I'm sure things are changing for folks who live in that area.

Katie Hyslop
I’m sure they are. Yeah, and we'll probably continue to find out how and in what ways as time goes on.

Harrison Mooney
Likely after the fact, right? Everybody's just feeling good right now. And then, as soon as this is all over, we'll hear the stories of all the people who were negatively impacted.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, yeah.

Harrison Mooney
But it’s not just bylaws putting pressure on Vancouver. The city’s working class is shouldering the burden of thousands of World Cup visitors. That’s when we come back.

[AD BREAK]

Harrison Mooney
What about people working in the city? You know, I, like everyone else, was really amused by the stories that have been going around about Australians just drinking all the beer in the city. You know, there's the Irish bar at like Granville, and I want to say, like, Seymour, maybe I don't know, I don't know my geography, it's over there somewhere, but Dublin Calling. This bar, where you know the Australians came in after one of their wins and just drank so much beer that the manager had to, like, order more, and, like, that he didn't have enough. And then, like, there were there have been a couple of news stories about just, people like running out of beer because, some fans from one of the countries that won have come in and just drank it all, That's really cute and funny, and you know, everybody wants to hear these stories about, man, the Australians, boy, can they ever drink, but also it sounds like a nightmare to be the manager of a bar and you run out of beer, so you know that's my one example, but I hear there are other ones.

Katie Hyslop
So before the game started, Unite Here! Local 40, which represents a bunch of hospitality workers, so hotel workers in particular, and also workers at the Vancouver airport, so YVR, they held a rally in early June because they wanted $30 an hour wage increases for YVR concession employees related to the World Cup. I did not see whether or not they were actually granted. The hotel workers also had a march in early May to draw attention to their low pay in relation to how much money hotel owners were expected to rake in from the from the World Cup, however, I also looked up the most recent story I could find was from about 11 days ago, but it was, I believe, from Global about how hotels are not as booked up as they had anticipated for the World Cup.

Harrison Mooney
Interesting.

Katie Hyslop
think that's something else we'll find out afterwards, is like, how many, because we were inspect, excuse me, expecting 350,000 people to come, but last I turned out we hadn't sold out all of our games.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, I was surprised. Actually, I've been surprised every time that my friends have told me they're going to one of the games, because my friends, like me, are poor. Yeah, and the tickets have been, just exorbitant prices, so it seemed like nobody will be going to these games, but I mean, yeah, like, I most of my friends have managed to go to one of these games. And yeah, that to me seems like a concern. I think we were supposed to be priced out. I'm pretty sure.

Katie Hyslop
The sign of bad things is your friends getting to go.

Harrison Mooney
No, the sign that something's not working is that I can afford it.

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, and yet Global News is reporting that some businesses in the Downtown Eastside, Chinatown, and Gastown are actually doing worse business for this time of year during the World Cup than they were last year.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, it will be interesting to see, when those price tags come in like, how, how much we actually made, because I mean, obviously, the big number, 350,000 people, like that doesn't seem… I didn't believe it then, I think is what I'm saying. Okay, maybe it'll turn out that I, I'm just a cynic, but I mean, all the numbers, even the numbers of like the injection into our economy, it was like that. Doesn't seem-

Katie Hyslop
The $1 billion I think

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, yeah, there's a billion dollars coming our way.

Katie Hyslop
The total of how much this cost has already crept up, and we're not even done the games yet.

Harrison Mooney
Right? So it might end up being a not for profit World Cup.

Katie Hyslop
Oh! Yikes.

Harrison Mooney
That's good. We love a not for profit here.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, what needs money more than FIFA?

Harrison Mooney
So, the hotels are maybe not booked up. Where are the athletes staying?

Katie Hyslop
As far as I know, they are staying in hotels. One of the requests from people living in the Downtown Eastside, or people who are precariously housed, was to have any housing put aside for them, but there was no housing built specifically for the games, unlike the Olympics, we got a whole little neighborhood out of it.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, I did think that we would get some kind of new infrastructure here.

Katie Hyslop
I think it's the only thing is the pavilion at the PNE. Everything else is temporary, like those, those fences that are around both stadiums right now.

Harrison Mooney
But I'm sure that if there's been any displacement, that will turn out to be somewhat closer to permanent, right? Isn’t that how this normally goes.

Katie Hyslop
It is, yeah. Well, once you leave Vancouver…

Harrison Mooney
Speaking of the price tag, then I mean, we, we're it's coming up towards a billion dollars. What is that money being spent on?

Katie Hyslop
That's a good question. The only thing that I could see in news reports that I was reading, because this is not something I covered myself specifically, but the big chunk I saw was policing. From The Guardian, for the World Cup, the city has allocated at least $242 million from an estimated total budget of $685 million to $729 million for integrated public safety, traffic management, and stadium management.

Harrison Mooney
Okay.

Katie Hyslop
Which I believe also includes police, but-

Harrison Mooney
That's a lot of extra money to police department that has already received a lot of extra money recently.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, and I believe that their.. I don't know that their budget, the budget asks that they had for 2026 was specifically anything to do with FIFA, I would have to look that up. So, yeah, I think this might be additional money on top of what was already budgeted for the cops.

Harrison Mooney
Must be sweet.

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, I've seen cops on bikes, cops on horses, cops on motorcycles, cops on foot, and lots of cop vehicles.

Harrison Mooney
I saw a bunch of cop helicopters.

Harrison Mooney
I mean, obviously, you gotta, you gotta watch the skies, you got to patrol the skies. Somebody might do an unauthorized FIFA sky writing thing

Katie Hyslop
Exactly, or they like make their, their bodies in the shape of the World Cup
Harrison Mooney
That would be amazing. Actually, Just on that.. I love the giant soccer ball. I-

Katie Hyslop
Ok, yeah.

Harrison Mooney
Hold on a second. You said okay, yeah, like maybe you don't love the giant soccer ball, and now my next question is, why don't you love the giant soccer ball, Katie?

Katie Hyslop
It's not that I don't love the giant soccer ball, actually I took several photos from my dad of the giant soccer ball in in process. I don't know, I, I think I am also mixing up my own distaste for how money is spent and for certain international sports organizations with my feelings about soccer in general, which I actually, I played soccer as a kid, I was terrible. But grade one to grade six, every summer I think I had one goal and one assist.

Harrison Mooney
Maybe you were a defense?

Katie Hyslop
Probably not, no. We won, I think two bronze medals, and it was a very small league.

Harrison Mooney
Two bronze medals is nothing to sneeze at. That’s Vancouver’s Olympic medal count most years.

Katie Hyslop
Well in my under twelves in St. John’s girls’ league, that was me.
Harrison Mooney
Yeah, I mean, I guess the soccer ball, if I'm taking off my love of sports hat, it really is just kind of a monument to an evil organization, maybe. Can I say that? And yeah, it says something, but also it's just a big ball.

Katie Hyslop
It is just a big ball.

Harrison Mooney
I love a big ball.

Katie Hyslop
I have to agree with you there, I really do love that ball in general, and the light shows that they put on all the time, so yeah, it is, it is really cute, and it's also how I recognized the other day when I saw a woman wearing a corset made out of soccer balls.

Harrison Mooney
The idea that a World Cup can change a city isn’t new. That’s why Vancouver was supposed to prepare a plan to protect residents’ fundamental human rights. After the break, Katie gets into what actually happened.

[AD BREAK]

Harrison Mooney
Well, I do want to talk about the World Cup's impact on human rights. You've written a lot about the human rights plan, and I didn't realize that you had to have a human rights plan to host soccer.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, I believe this is somewhat new for FIFA. I don't have the date that it started, but for example, Qatar hosted the World Cup in 2022 and there was an estimated 6,500 migrant worker deaths related to the World Cup.

Harrison Mooney
Right. That’s probably when that started.

Katie Hyslop
I'd have to go back and check to be sure, but they take it somewhat seriously. So, when you become a candidate for a host to become a host city, every candidate city has to create or has to do their own stakeholder consultations for human rights and submit a report to FIFA as part of your candidacy to become a host city, except for Vancouver.

Harrison Mooney
Why?

Katie Hyslop
Because Vancouver was a late entry into becoming a candidate for the host nation.

Harrison Mooney
What? I don't understand how that precludes them from having to do the human rights part of it.

Katie Hyslop
Well guess they were running out of time. How they were allowed to skip that, I'm not entirely sure. However, they got to sign a predefined human rights commitment, and then list all the stakeholders that they would consult on their eventual human rights framework. Jerome Igbokwe at BCCLA, or BC Civil Liberties Association, believes that Vancouver got off easy because Vancouver has a bit of a pro-human rights reputation.

Harrison Mooney
Let's go back to that. So far, most of the ways the World Cup has affected me, I think, are probably just fine. Like, increased traffic is annoying, but I mean, I've mostly been riding my bike, and even there, there's been increased traffic, you know? This is my very hyper-local complaint. Some of these people, man, they can't ride their bikes. It's like they've never ridden their bikes before in their lives. People are weaving and winding all over the bike path, you know. And it's actually like a woman nearly hit me the other day, just kind of like, just like swerving into where I was. But, that's fine. It's not that big a deal, especially since things can be a lot worse, there was, there was one quote from one of your World Cup stories that, that stayed with me, and I'm not going to misattribute it to you this time.

“FIFA is an engine for displacement, criminalization, and discrimination, when what this city needs is investment, care, and community,” said Laura McIntyre, staff lawyer with Pivot Legal Society. “We know that the forces that FIFA is bringing to Vancouver are not unique. Instead, they're symptoms of a global pattern of harm that accompany all mega sporting events across the world.”

So, yeah, I did want to ask you about, I mean, displacement specifically, and the sense that an event like this will be used to push people out of a neighborhood, and then those folks may not actually be able to come back in. Is the World Cup gonna just wind up being a way to accelerate gentrification?

Katie Hyslop
That's always a fear and a possibility with big events like this. So I was here during the lead up to the like the first two years toward the Olympics, and I was reporting for Megaphone at the time, and one of the things that I kept hearing about was Atlanta in the 1990s, when they hosted the 1996 Olympics. So, at the time, Associated Press had reported that Atlanta removed some 9,000 homeless people to a newly built detention center. It gave others a one-way bus ticket out of town and launched Operation Olympus, quote unquote, detaining hundreds of people to reduce crime. So that's — cities have, I guess, maybe learned from the backlash to that not to do that sort of thing.
Harrison Mooney
There was a backlash to that.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, definitely a backlash to that. It’s something that I remember coming up during the Olympics preparation here, that like they do this for the Olympics sort of thing, so to my knowledge that did not happen here, but there have been talk about street sweeps, and so some of the bylaws that haven't changed. But there are concerns about them being over-enforced in the Downtown Eastside, in particular, are the bylaw that prevents people from setting up tents and parks during the day, and the bylaw that requires sidewalks to stay clear could be used to move people who are precariously housed or unhoused altogether from sitting or lying on the sidewalk, as often happens in the downtown east side. There's a group down there called POWER, which stands for Police Oversight With Evidence and Research.

Harrison Mooney
That’s a great acronym.

Katie Hyslop
It is a great acronym. And they are grassroots police watchdogs, basically. And so they have reported an uptick in cops enforcing a variety of infractions in the neighbourhood since last year. So, not necessarily related to the World Cup, but preparation for the World Cup did start in January, and the VPD also have a new district headquarters now in the Downtown Eastside, which is also in the same building that's also soon going to house a new police training center in the future. On game days in the two-kilometre zone, the place is crawling with police officers, as we've already discussed, so police officers everywhere. Pivot Legal Society has legal observers in the community, in the neighbourhood, rather, on game days, and they told me that there have been reports of street sweeps happening around Main and Hastings on game days. So I want to give you a little history for people who are maybe not as familiar with street sweeps in Vancouver in 2023 the police and city workers removed more than 90 tents belonging to individuals, people living on the sidewalks and haste on Hastings between in Main and Carrall streets. This was controversial for many reasons, because there was no housing to move people into at the time, like there had been in other decampments. People lost their belongings, everything from tents they sleep in to their medications to their ID to important documents, et cetera. So, when the city was debating new bylaws for the World Cup, changing them, there was debate between councilors and staff about the definition of what a street sweep is.

Harrison Mooney
Do we have a working definition?

Katie Hyslop
It's really broad, actually. So, what one person sees as a street sweep, well, I'll give you.. I'll tell you what Pivot has been seeing. So, Pivot told me that on two game days so far this year, and on other days during, as FIFA has been ongoing, police have been accompanying city workers while they move up and down Hastings Street, approaching people who are outside with their belongings, and either asking them to pack up their belongings into a plastic bag or to quote unquote voluntarily put their belongings into a black garbage bin, which will be impounded, and then they can retrieve them later if they're able to. If they're not able to, it's tossed out.

Harrison Mooney
So you can put them in the garbage, and later you might be able to get them back.

Katie Hyslop
Exactly.

Harrison Mooney
Also, maybe you might not, because you did put them in the garbage.

Katie Hyslop
Exactly. So Pivot has said that enforcement has been uneven during this time, so some people are asked to stand up and move along if they're sitting on the sidewalk, and other people are asked to condense their piles of belongings, but allowed to stay. And then, yeah, other people are being asked to like either put it in a garbage bag and move along, or we'll take it for you and hold on to for you. Some unaccompanied stuff is removed, so if someone's gone somewhere to get food and left their stuff behind, well, it's not going to be there when they get back when this happens. And it seems to, according to Pivot, focus on the rapid bus stop for FIFA tourists on Hastings Street. I asked the VPD, the Vancouver Police Department, about these game day sweeps, and they told me it's not related to the games or the Downtown Eastside in general at all.

Harrison Mooney
Oh, really?

Katie Hyslop
Yes. So they said this is the city of Vancouver's integrated response team of police following city sanitation workers as they go up and down Hastings between Dunlevy and Cambie. They say it's asking people to pack up their stuff that they have for sale, any tents they have set up, and garbage. Police say that they are there at the city workers' requests because of alleged incidents of violence that have happened in the past, and the police told me this has been happening regularly since 2022. But I was communicating with Sgt. Adam Donaldson, and he told me that he's worked in the Downtown Eastside back in 2012 and that similar work was happening then, so is this a sweep? That depends on your perspective, but again, we're talking about people who, if housed, have no living rooms to hang out in and have limited third spaces. If they're homeless, they have no daytime spaces to hang out in, except on game days when there is some extended hours in some spaces and no place to store their belongings, so they and their stuff are going to be on the sidewalks. Whether this leads to gentrification, no SROs, to my knowledge, have been like gutted out and turned into housing for tourists, like was happening around the Olympics, and nothing was built, no housing was built specifically for the games. So it's not clear if people are going to move in and, like, invest in the neighborhood and price people out, like, like might have happened in previous big events, but people are still being obviously really affected, low-income people in particular.

Harrison Mooney
Right. But they may not be street sweeps, or maybe they're a different thing that resembles street sweeps, but we're calling it something else.

Katie Hyslop
Exactly. I think it really depends on who you ask, and it seems like the people who live in the neighborhood and who represent people who live in the neighborhood or work for their rights see this as street sweeps, right? Whereas the city officials and police do not.

Harrison Mooney
With all of this, are there still reasons to love the World Cup in our city?

Katie Hyslop
Okay, so I have a little story. When I was nine, I remember watching, I think it was the final game of the World Cup that year, ‘94 Brazil versus Italy, perhaps. I saw it in my grandfather's living room with him, my uncle, my dad, and my sister. I was the youngest person there at the time, so I reached out to my dad and my sister recently to make sure that I had these details right.

Harrison Mooney
Interrupting to say that you got that one right, Brazil beat Italy three two on penalties in 94. And you said you don't like sports. I couldn't have done that off the top.

Katie Hyslop
To be fair, I was bored to tears, and like I picked Brazil just to be a contrarian, because everyone else, I guess, was going for Italy. So I reached out to my dad and my sister just a few days ago to make sure that I was remembering this correctly. They were older, obviously, and so my dad remembered the game, but he couldn't remember who was playing. My sister didn't remember the game, but she said, "But I saw Nigeria play in St. John's. I was like, "What are you talking about? Nigeria didn't play a World Cup game in St. John's, but doing my research, I found out there were a couple of World Cup qualifying games that happened in St. John's, Newfoundland in the 1980s So, in 1985 there was a qualifying game for Canada, who beat Honduras in St. John's, which meant that Canada would enter the World Cup for the first time. Yeah, Mexico that year, and then the second time was.. I did not realize this, but there are under 16 world championships for FIFA, so St. John's hosted six games for that back in 1987. My dad, my sister, and my stepmother all swore that it was Nigeria that they saw play. Nigeria didn't play in St. John's that year.

Harrison Mooney
Different African team.

Katie Hyslop
Yes, yes, yes, it was the Ivory Coast versus Ecuador. They also thought it might have been Mexico. It's been 39 years, but my sister and I were like, okay, memory is fallible.

Katie Hyslop
My point being is yes, there are still good reasons to love soccer, to even love world championships. I never would have thought that Newfoundland would have hosted anything equivalent to or close to the World Cup. It brought my family together, it brings your family together.

Harrison Mooney
It brings the world together.

Katie Hyslop
It brings the world together. And you know, I was terrible at soccer as a child, but it was fun, and it's an easy sport to get into, you just need a ball.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I mean, Vancouver has, like, we're on a just a legendary soccer run right now, right? Because, I mean, certainly in my house, I mean, both of my kids are doing East Van Micro Footie, and they're champions, they're amazing little soccer players. But then, that's turned into like, like a weekly grownups versus kids soccer game that we play at a park in East Van. But then you know the like the Vancouver Rise, the women's team, like they are the inaugural NSL champions, and then I mean the Whitecaps, like they signed Thomas Müller, and they, they got to the championship game this last year, so I mean suddenly soccer is just ascendant here, we've got champions here and champions there, and now the World Cup is here. It's very exciting, but you know, all that said, it is still nice to know that some people are actually focusing on all of the other stuff that gets swept under the rug, so that we can have fun with our sports.

Katie Hyslop
Yeah, yeah, we always need eyes on things other than the prize, I guess, too, because someone has to be watching. Is our fun actually hurting somebody? Because that's generally not what we're aiming to do, but can happen if you're not careful.

Harrison Mooney
Well, Katie, thanks so much for joining us on the Tyee podcast. This has been — I'm gonna say a wonderful bummer.

Katie Hyslop
Anytime. I will be Debbie Downer anytime for you.

Harrison Mooney
Katie Hyslop is a reporter at The Tyee. They cover education, youth issues, policing and even city politics. You can read more of their reporting on our website at thetyee.ca
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Today's episode was hosted by me, Harrison Mooney. It was produced by Isaac Phan Nay and engineered by Jacob Boon. Our music is by Brian Binnema. Join us again in two weeks.