Celebratory Signs

The phrase celebratory sign has become infamous through its use in the City of Vancouver’s July and December omnibus Olympic bylaws.

In the December bylaw, the crucial phrase is defined in this way (bylaw p. 2 / pdf 22):

“Celebratory sign” means a sign that celebrates the 2010 Winter Games, and creates or enhances a festive environment and atmosphere for the 2010 Winter Games

On the morning of 3 December 2009, speaking to Vancouver City Council, Paul Henderson (Director, Olympic and Paralympic Operations) stated that a celebratory sign should be considered as equivalent to a non-commercial sign, and that the word ‘celebratory’ has no implication whatsoever for actual sign content. (In other words, The Olympics Suck should be considered celebratory because the message is non-commercial.) Henderson’s interpretative move appears to follow from this provision (p. 3 / pdf 3) in the bylaw’s overarching summary:

Limit commercial advertising during the Games without impacting freedom of political expression for residents and visitors

At this point, it helps to pause and recall the severe criticisms and legal challenge that the City of Vancouver brought on itself by its cavalier enactment of restrictions on rights and freedoms in the July bylaw. The replacement December bylaw maneuvers to satisfy conditions in the Host City Contract (2002) by turning to a nonintuitive understanding of the word celebratory – an understanding that in fact flies in the face of the document’s own definition. One thing appears on paper to satisfy the requirements of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); another will be understood in practice to avoid transgression against Charter rights and freedoms.

The City’s way out of the IOC propaganda dilemma is to draw a distinction between commercial advertising and everything else, and then to characterize everything else as celebratory and permitted.

After the February 2010 party, it seems unlikely that the IOC would pursue legal action against the City of Vancouver for having failed to suppress propaganda, because such an action would only serve to further damage the Olympic brand. The demand for control of propaganda in public space aims preemptively to insulate the Olympic brand. The goal in all cases is to prevent negative associations from attaching to the Olympic brand, whether through protest itself or through the fallout from protest.

Discussion of signage possibilities reached a pinnacle of absurdity in a little-attended consultation on 15 December 2009. David McLellan (General Manager, Community Services Group, City of Vancouver) engaged in an exchange with a questioner about City enforcement against protest signs. McLellan began by emphasizing that special Olympic enforcement provisions apply only to commercial signs. When the questioner proposed a hypothetical cloth banner, McLellan presumed that it would pose a safety hazard and thus not fall under the ordinary bylaw (with no action taken for 30 days). The questioner then pushed the point, specifying a banner on private property, well removed from public sidewalks or overhead space, that said Fuck You and Your Fucking Olympics. At that point, McLellan nervously brought the chain of hypothesizing to an end, muttering something about “probably.”

In the end, what signs will be allowed and where those signs will be allowed remains extremely confusing. For the celebratory sign, the omnibus December bylaw at 8.12(a) states:

A celebratory sign requires a permit under the Sign By-law unless it is at a venue or city site or at Robson Square (p. 34 / pdf 54)

This confusion seems most likely to work to the advantage of the minion City of Vancouver, and secondarily to that of its sometime master, the International Olympic Committee.

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