Fortunately for the Chapters bookstore in downtown Vancouver, a group of sane citizens prevented a drunken mob from doing more than breaking a few windows and burning a few books. I especially like the older gentleman who kicks the young rioter in the stomach.
In the mayhem of the riot following the Vancouver Canucks loss in the Stanley Cup final, Graham Peterson recorded the rioting morons smashing the front windows at the store and chanting “burn the books.”
“It just seemed crazy to all of us, like it didn’t make any sense, it just seemed insane,” Graham Peterson told the CBC after he stepped in and fended off the rioters. ”You’re standing facing a crowd that’s all shouting and yelling, especially … the whole book-burning thing … that was crazy.”
Brennan Lloyd, another passerby who was among those who stood down the rioters, put it this way:
“It’s really silly that people would get so passionate about such an arbitrary thing [like a hockey game] when there are so many other important things happening in society…It just seems like such a complete waste of human ingenuity and passion.”