New ESPN doc shows a different side of the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots impact

June 22, 2024

A new documentary about the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot opens with a solitary figure chopping wood under a grey sky. Her voiceover matches the visuals: “My world was turned upside down in the sense it was, like, a giant rock being dropped into a still pond.”

All at once, she says, “It was terrifying, and I didn’t know what to do.”

On June 15, 2011, after the Canucks fell 4-0 to the Bruins in a Game 7 at home in the Stanley Cup Final, she was a 21-year-old university student. She was also among those who joined a riot that would billow smoke and headlines from the downtown core of a city only one year removed from the euphoria of the Winter Olympics.

Disbelief soon gave way to rage. Rioters were identified online — cell phone cameras were everywhere that night — and punished both legally and socially. That second element is one of the narrative pillars of “I’m Just Here for the Riot,” the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary from Vancouver filmmakers Asia Youngman and Kathleen Jayme, set to premiere at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto on Sunday.

“We definitely are not excusing people who actually committed terrible crimes and hurt people,” said Jayme. “But all the rioters can’t just fit under one umbrella, and that’s kind of what we wanted to show.”

In 2016, almost five years after the riot, The B.C. Prosecution Service released a 21-page report on the scope of what unfolded over the course of five hours after the hockey game. The report estimated there were 155,000 people downtown, between those watching in designated viewing areas, and those on the streets around those areas.

Monetary damages were estimated at $3.78 million, accounting for losses to business ($2.7 million) as well as costs to the public ($525,000) and to private citizens ($540,000). Police also fielded reports for 52 assaults, including civilians as well as first responders.

Youngman and Jayme were both in the city that night. Youngman was home for the summer from her studies at the University of Victoria, and she was downtown. She said she can still remember how she felt afraid as she saw the black smoke billowing above the high rises.

Jayme watched the game at home with friends. After the Canucks lost, they headed to Kitsilano Beach to “shoot some hoops and blow off some steam,” which is where they started to notice the smoke, with reports of the riot coming through on their mobile phones.

“I think everyone in Vancouver remembers exactly where they were when the riots happened,” said Youngman. “Whether they were in Vancouver or not — whether they were downtown or not — everyone kind of has a story.”

“I was so angry with the rioters,” said Jayme. “But then, when I saw what was happening online, that’s when things started to get a bit murky. Because I was like, ‘Oh, this isn’t right either.’ It didn’t feel good, and that’s when I realized: ‘There’s something interesting going on here, because now I have conflicting feelings about these rioters that, yesterday, I was so upset with.’”

Through an exploration of those feelings, the documentary questions whether those rioters — or at least those guilty of only property crimes and poor taste in selfie locations — were punished too harshly. With the power of social media, the filmmakers ask, has the public shaming outstripped the crime?

“I think the goal was to make you feel all the things,” said Jayme. “At times, you are super-angry at what’s going on. And then, at times, you’re like, ‘Wait a second, no, I actually do feel empathetic.’”

The 2011 Vancouver riot after the Canucks’ Game 7 loss in the Stanley Cup Final cost the city an estimated $3.78 million in damages. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

Sarah McCusker is the woman shown chopping wood in the opening moments of the film. During the riot, she said she reached into a broken shop window and stole “four clothes hangers of clothes,” before noticing the sea of cell phone cameras pointing in her direction. She said she dumped the merchandise on a bench.

“As the week progressed, I probably had about 200 messages,” she tells the filmmakers. “I stopped looking at them after a while. They were just so nasty.”

McCusker says she accepted responsibility and turned herself into authorities.

“It came at a really difficult time in my life,” McCusker says. “I’d been doing drugs before then. But it wasn’t until after I experienced all that that I really started to become addicted. I just had so much pain and questions and just felt so crappy about everything.”

More than a decade later, she can still find the comments written about her online, as she does for the camera.

Alex Prochazka was a 20-year-old professional mountain bike rider and skier from Whistler who was photographed in front of a burning vehicle. As his image at the riot circulated, he says his sponsors dropped him: “I think I lost everything within three days to a week — it just ended pretty quick.”

He would eventually plead guilty to participating in a riot, and was given a $100 fine, as well as eight months of probation: “The harassment on social media was way worse than what I actually got from a judge.”

Not every rioter who appears in the documentary was comfortable showing their face or permitting use of their name. Youngman said it took work to earn the trust of rioters who had endured the public wrath over the months and years since 2011, and that “some people just wanted to move on, understandably.”

“We felt like, here’s your chance to say what happened in your own words and offer your side of the story,” she said. “Kat and I were going to explore this topic regardless, but we just felt it would be so much stronger to have those authentic perspectives from the people who were directly involved.”

Jayme was born and raised in Vancouver, and recently released another sports-related project, “The Grizzlie Truth,” about the star-crossed life of the city’s former NBA franchise. Youngman has shown two films (“This Ink Runs Deep” and “N’xaxaitkw”) at the Toronto International Film Festival.

When ESPN announced their project earlier this year, reaction was strong on social media. Youngman and Jayme said they have both avoided spending too much time reading the responses, especially before the audience had a chance to see the film for itself.

“Obviously, what we have read, there are fans who are upset that this story’s being told,” said Jayme. “There are also fans who I think understand what we’re trying to do, and the perspective we’re trying to share. We’re not trying to make all Canucks fans look bad. That’s not the point of this film at all.”

It matters, she said, that the film has been directed by Vancouverites, and by people who were there as the story unfolded — not just that night, but in the years that followed. She said the story was about more than the images beamed across the world on the evening news, but on the lasting, multi-platform impact it has had across the city.

“If you were from another province, and you didn’t actually experience both these kind of events in the moment, I don’t think you would have that kind of understanding,” said Jayme. “Asia and I always talked about not wanting to give rioters a free pass. We’re not trying to excuse anyone for this.

“We really just want to come at this story with an empathetic lens.”

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(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)

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