Inside Vancouver
Smoke Signals
By Rod Filbrandt published Jun 1, 2008
I’m ready. Pockets bristling with Dunhills, bandoleer slotted with Cohibas, and equipped with all manner of lighters, matches, and holders, I’m planning to mark this day—March 31, 2008—in a haze of glory, smoking like it’s going out of style. Because it is.
In accordance with new regulations giving the City of Vancouver even bigger muscles than the rest of newly clear-skied B.C., March 31 is my last chance to light up in such “indoor public places” as taxis, offices, and…cigar clubs? Am I’m deciphering the bafflegab? “A person must not smoke in a building, except in enclosed premises that are not private clubs or smoking clubs, a purpose of which is to allow patrons, customers, or other persons to smoke.” Forgetting that Vancouver doesn’t really do momentous—remember the “Don’t even think about coming downtown” buzz kill of New Year’s 2000?—I make a vow: to be in the thick of things for the last stinky hurrah.
I’ve already seen cigarette racks in stores boarded with the sad grey government shutters of shame. By mid-afternoon I’m noticing desolate patios. Small clusters of confused, downtrodden puffers dither about on sidewalks, trying to figure out where they’re supposed to stand. They don’t look angry; like buffaloes and roller-boogiers, they wear expressions that speak of grappling with a new, inarguable reality: this isn’t working anymore. A crucial phase in Vancouver’s homogenization is well under way.
This isn’t the city’s first attempt to clear the air. Back in 2003, bar owners and reprobates alike were banging bar tops, screeching at the top of their perforated lungs that they wouldn’t butt out without a fight. Through loopholes of patios and quickly devised, expensively ventilated smoking rooms, many owners did manage to deke through the bureaucratic obstacle course, but it was only forestalling the inevitable. Five years later, here we are, sunk from a scream to a whisper. Is it deference to Olympic fever? Recognition that we need to walk tall, with minty-fresh breath and neatly trimmed nose hairs, when we become “world class?” Or is it a new era? City health inspector Domenic Losito says that smoking’s day is done (and presumably its night, too), and he’s not wrong: B.C. has the lowest smoking rate in the country, one that has seen a seven-percent drop in a decade.
