CANADA : Vancouver Hoping Yeltsin Can Hang On Until Summit

Demonstrators, hoteliers, tourism promoters, even visiting American patriots--anyone in this coastal city with something to gain from the upcoming U.S.-Russia summit--are holding their breath, hoping that Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s Moscow troubles will not force a cancellation of the event, scheduled for next weekend.

“It’s going to be nip and tuck for (Yeltsin),” said Michael Lambert, general manager of the swanky downtown Hotel Vancouver. But “all the hotel men and women in Vancouver are praying for him.”

This fast-growing, scenic city in British Columbia was selected as the summit site because both Yeltsin and President Clinton wanted to avoid the near-theological complexity of my-place or your-place negotiations; because both leaders wished to stress the Pacific Rim’s importance to their economies, and because Clinton is scheduled to be in the Northwest next week for a forestry meeting, dubbed the Tree Summit.

Residents here know a high-profile, smoothly run summit would confer at least two days’ worth of money and international prestige; many are rushing ahead with preparations on the assumption the event will occur.

Consider protest groups. Lush, green Vancouver is, after all, the city that gave birth to Greenpeace, the environmental group that more than any other perfected the now-common technique of co-opting the media and engaging in street theater.

Now, with estimates that as many as 4,000 journalists and broadcast technicians will be descending on its hometown, Greenpeace plans to call back representatives from Washington, Moscow and Ottawa to agitate for an agreement limiting nuclear weapons testing.

Greenpeace isn’t the only group to have spotted the publicity opportunity. Locals opposing everything from free trade to clear-cut logging are drawing up plans, hoping to exploit the boredom of reporters covering the summit.

Victoria Hogan, 52, a vegetarian, says that, “over a pot of tea” with a friend, she came up with a plan to distribute green ribbons to anyone who, like her, supports environmental protection, alternative medicine and reductions in the national debt. She wants to make Vancouver a sea of waving green ribbons and has been networking with groups as diverse as Beyond Beef and the United Farm Workers of America in her quest.

An activist with a very different cause, Marc Valentine, 42, hopes to turn Vancouver red, white and blue. He is a free-lance American patriot who logs 260 days a year on the road, traveling in a gaudy, six-ton flatbed truck equipped with sirens and flashing blue lights and painted with stirring images of Old Glory.

In the back of his truck are six American flags, each nine stories tall, available for any event requiring more than a touch of the Stars and Stripes. He recently heaved into town from Alaska, where his flags served as markers in a dog-sled race.

Just 20 miles south of Vancouver, still other Americans are lying in wait for the world leaders, hoping to capitalize on their visit. They are residents of Point Roberts, a tiny spit of American soil at the end of a Canadian peninsula that extends just over the 49th Parallel.

Point Roberts residents have water on three sides and Canada on the fourth. They bill their community as the only part of America, other than Hawaii and Alaska, that isn’t part of the contiguous United States. They have asked Clinton to stop by and contemplate their unique situation. This suggestion has amused the Canadians of Vancouver, who know Point Roberts as a good place to unwind on cheap American beer and stock up on low-tax gasoline, cigarettes and junk food.

“Think of the tour possibilities!” wrote columnist Jamie Lamb in the Vancouver Sun. “(Clinton) could hoist a few brewskies at the Breakers--Boris would want to come along for that--while the limos fill up their tanks at the gas bar. Then a stop at one of the stores to stock up on inexpensive smokes and cheese and exotic potato chips, all leading to the dramatic finale at Canada Customs. . . .”