#VanPoli | VanRamblings Endorsement Ballot for Vancouver School Board

Voters in 2026 are being given the golden opportunity to wrest control of the Vancouver School Board away from the Greens, ABC Vancouver, and its right-of-centre predecessor, the Non Partisan Association, and place the decision making on Vancouver’s Board of Education firmly back into the hands of advocates for public education, the parents who have children enrolled in the school district, and the approximately 51,859 students who attend elementary or secondary school in Vancouver each and every day.

Do you know, there was a time not so long ago that …

  • The Vancouver School Board operated a volunteer programme on the Downtown Eastside and in Strathcona where immigrant parents — who spoke little or no English — were enrolled in a programme that afforded them an opportunity to support the goals of their children who are enrolled in the Vancouver school district. Now, this was a wildly successful programme. However, thanks to successive Greens, NPA and ABC Vancouver School Board administrations — that would be the folks we elected to Vancouver’s Board of Education — due to “cost cutting” measures (cuz the parents and volunteers and immigrant parents met in a school setting) — that invaluable programme no longer exists;
  • The Vancouver School Board (VSB) operates four standing committees.

    According to official VSB records, the names of these four committees are:

      • Education Plan Committee
      • Facilities Planning Committee
      • Finance and Personnel Committee
      • Policy and Governance Committee

    Additionally, the Board is occasionally supported by specific subcommittees or ad hoc groups, such as the Audit Committee, Advocacy Subcommittee, or the Food Framework Ad Hoc Committee.

    There was a time in the recent past when these committees — chaired by an elected School Board trustee — were active, and provided the union workers employed by the school district, parents who have children enrolled in Vancouver and students themselves to play a significant role, through these committees, in determining policy at the Board level, where the Board Trustee Committee Chairperson would report out at the regularly scheduled meetings of the Board, often moving motions that arose from various of the Committees’ discussions.

    Unsurprisingly, not so much anymore, as the last two terms of the Board of Education encouraged these very important committees to lay dormant, negating the opportunity for the public to be involved in Board decision-making.

The above are but two examples of how the two most recent Vancouver Boards of Education has wrested control of decision-making away from parents, students and CUPE staff employed by the Board.

In 2026, we call that: undemocratic or an unconscionable power grab by Board trustees, over the course of the last two terms of the Vancouver School Board.

With the support of voters who have turned up at the Advance Polls, or intend to vote on Election Day, this upcoming Saturday, October 17 — in what is widely regarded as a change election — the very real opportunity exists, at the Board of Education level — to once again, after so many years of “fiscal prudence (read: destruction of public education in the Vancouver School District) to restore democratic governance at the Vancouver School Board, where once again the voices of the public will be heard around the Board of Education table and, more often than not, acted upon.

Yes, we know the numbers above are out of order, but the candidate ballot numbers are correct.  

VanRamblings knows and has worked with each of the candidates running to become a Trustee around the decision-making table at the Vancouver School Board.

    • Dr. Krista Surgurdson is an academic researcher and educator, political staffer, mother, community organizer, parent advocate, friend, and spouse. She has a PhD in Sociology and worked as a health care researcher at Stanford University and as a research and writing instructor at UBC. Krista believes all Vancouver children, regardless of where they live or their economic or family circumstances, deserve to experience the best possible educational experience that Vancouver schools can provide. Krista has been working her butt off these past weeks and months to become a VSB trustee, because she wants to be a part of putting children and families at the centre of decision-making around Vancouver’s Board of Education table.

    • Rory Brown is an educator with 15 years experience teaching at the secondary school level in Vancouver, has in the past served as President of the Vancouver Secondary Teachers Association, and now teaches the next generation of teachers, at BCIT and UBC. Rory — who has rarely missed a meeting of the Board, in years — would bring a wealth of knowledge to the School Board table, not the least of his myriad skills a deep understanding of labour relations — critically important to a Board, where the VSB administration is too often given to fighting every grievance filed by an employee of the Board, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars before the Labour Relations Board, often in losing causes for the VSB administrators — and even more importantly, Rory’s dedication to promoting the cause of public education on behalf of students enrolled in the Vancouver School District.

  • Suzie Mah is fighting for an education system where everyone has the ability to raise a family in this city and has the right to the best educational experiences.
    A retired teacher and union organizer for more than 30 years, Suzie has taught every grade from Kindergarten to Grade 12, including non-graduated adults. Suzie, perhaps better than any other trustee, knows what our students needs are, and understands our public education system. As a VSB Trustee since 2022, Suzie has held the line and fought back against ABC’s callous agenda — and won for students. Since being elected, Suzie has played a pivotal role in seeing life-saving defibrillators placed in schools, worked to save school meal programmes threatened by cuts, led the fight for free transit for teens, and opposed ABC Vancouver’s war on democracy, and their handouts of city land to private developers — every step of the way.

    • A four-term Vancouver School Board trustee, and former VSB Chairperson, during his terms in office — because Christopher is so dedicated to his work on behalf of students, particularly learners with disabilities or diverse abilities — that he completed studies in educational leadership and an M.Ed (’25), focusing on inclusive education and learning disabilities within UBC’s Faculty of Education — having earlier completed an Honours Bachelor’s degree at UBC. Both degrees inform Christopher’s approach on Board policy issues, oversight and Board governance, where his academic works helps to provide strategic direction to ensure that the VSB continues to provide K-12+ public educational opportunities for ALL learners, especially those who are vulnerable for whatever reason. Given his depth of experience, the fact that he completed two degrees at UBC while serving as a Vancouver School Board trustee, all the while serving as a Chartered Account and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of BC (ICABC) — and working as the longest serving Auxiliary police offer with the Vancouver Police Department — for which he received the Exemplary Peace Officer Service Award in November 2019, presented by the Governor General of Canada, Christopher is a must, must, must elect.

  • Derrick O’Keefe is, quite simply, one of my favourite people in the world, heartbreakingly bright and articulate, someone we met a quarter century ago when Derrick and his friend Charles Demers published Seven Oaks magazine, Vancouver’s best ever, most  thought-provoking political journal. Derrick O’Keefe will fight for fully funded, high quality education for ALL students – regardless of learning needs. As a parent of two school-aged boys, he has seen up-close how the system is failing under Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver’s cuts. Bringing his experience in advocacy for public education and his work as a journalist and writer, Derrick will fight for the needs of the many ahead of the wealthy few. He understands that in order to empower the next generation to fight for their communities, we need universal meal programmes, affordable and accessible childcare, and public land that is used for the public benefit.

  • Sherry Breshears, parent advocate, educator and education researcher, is running a campaign rooted in a straightforward conviction: every student deserves an inclusive, well-resourced public education system, and families should have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their children. Breshears holds a degree in Education from the University of British Columbia. Through her experience as a parent, she became increasingly involved in advocating for the educational support her own children and other students needed. She has served with Vancouver’s District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) and the Inclusive Education Working Group, working to make schools more responsive to students with diverse learning needs. Breshears’ campaign emphasizes equity, inclusion and transparency in school-board governance, and is focused on ensuring that students have access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed, families to be heard, and teachers and school staff to be treated with dignity and respect.

  • Steve Cardwell, a former Superintendent with the Vancouver School Board, is running for trustee with OneCity Vancouver. With more than four decades in education, Cardwell brings extensive experience in classroom teaching, school-district leadership and post-secondary education. In 2010, he became superintendent and chief executive officer of the Vancouver School Board, a position he held for five years. Cardwell holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of British Columbia, as well as a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Simon Fraser University. Cardwell is campaigning to strengthen student well-being, support teachers and school staff, and protect inclusive, welcoming neighbourhood schools. He also advocates transparent School Board governance and keeping public school properties in public hands. Cardwell’s candidacy offers voters a trustee with first-hand knowledge of the Vancouver school system, combining experience in educational leadership with a commitment to strengthening public education for students, families and communities.

  • Ishi Dinim, throughout his life, has involved in himself in advocacy as a way of bringing himself to this Earth, while setting a community activist example for his two teenage daughters. As a student at Emily Carr University, Ishi was elected to the Board of Governors. Later, Ishi joined the Vancouver School Board’s District Parental Advisory Council (DPAC). Ishi has spent nearly 10 years as an activist member of DPAC, six of those years as a general member and the last three as an Executive Member. This decade of experience with the VSB provides Ishi with an informed perspective on issues facing our public education system, and knowledge of how the VSB functions, which will allow him to understand and properly address such issues. Ishi Dinim believes in strong, thriving public education in Vancouver. He is passionate about student well-being and believes every learner should feel safe enough to be their whole self at school. He also believes we have a responsibility to protect and improve upon school land and other public assets for generations to come. Healthy public schools must meet the diverse needs of our communities, and Ishi Dinim will work to ensure that the VSB is properly staffed, and has the needed resources and supports to meet the learning needs of every student.

#VanPoli | VanRamblings Endorsement Ballot for Vancouver Park Board

With Mayoralty candidate Kareem Allam and his Vancouver Liberals committed to opening the City’s Capital Expenditure funds — which has pretty much lain dormant for 18 years, through Capital Expenditure Budgets having been approved by voters in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2022 — Kareem has told VanRamblings that he requires a Vancouver Liberals team of Park Board Commissioners to implement the Vancouver Liberals commitment to:

    • Spend $1.35 billion to restore Vancouver’s crumbling community centre infrastructure;
    • Build community pools and / or water parks in each of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods. Did you know that Vancouver has fewer pools per capita than every other large and medium size city in Canada? Montréal has 77 outdoor swimming pools, 95 wading pools and 150 water-play areas; while Toronto has 50 outdoor swimming pools, 127 wading pools and 263 water-play areas. Vancouver: only 5 seasonal municipal pools (Kitsilano, Second Beach, New Brighton, Maple Grove and Hillcrest), 24 wading pools across the city, and 14 water-play areas. A Vancouver Liberals’ Park Board — working with Vancouver City Council — means to more than double the number of seasonal and outdoors swimming pools, wading pools and water play areas.;
    • Restore Park Board funding. Did you know in 2008, when Vision Vancouver took power at City Hall, parks and recreation in the city accounted for 19.3% of the City’s budget? Today, Vancouver spends a paltry 7.9% of the City’s budget on maintaining our city’s parks, and well-frequented community and recreation centres, pools, hockey rinks and golf courses;
    • Build a new 50-metre pool, as well as a new aquatic centre in the coming term of office;
    • Build more hockey rinks, while restoring and renewing the hockey rink at the Britannia Community Centre.

All of the above is just for a start. For the first time in a generation, should you elect a Vancouver Liberals municipal administration at Vancouver City Hall.

  • More reasons to Vote for the 7 Candidates for Park Board Commissioner VanRamblings has included in our Park Board Endorsement Ballot. Each of the candidates listed above have long held a One Card.
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  • The One Card allows you to use any of the facilities in the 24 community centres across Vancouver.

We can tell you for a fact that Vancouver Liberals Park Board Commissioner candidates Mark Halyk, Shayla Bird, Scott Jensen, Amanda Bains, Amir Bajehkian and Tricia Barker make regular use of their One Card, and are regular and frequent visitors to their local community centre, for working out in the gym, going for a swim (or a skate), and attending a community meeting.

The same is true for Vancouver Park Board Commissioner candidate, TEAM’s Wah Gee!

In addition, many of the candidates listed above sit on the Board of Directors of their neighbourhood community centre, and have regularly attended Park Board meetings over the past years and many many times in recent months, leading up to their run for office — and, as a consequence, are acutely aware of the issues Park Board Commissioners must address. Not to mention, the 40 – 70 hours a week that being a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner requires of our electeds. They’re ready! Sacrifice is the order of the day.

Mark Halyk is a must-must-must-elect to the Vancouver Park Board.

After spending more than a decade working inside the Vancouver Park Board as a senior leader in Commercial Services, Mark brings something increasingly rare to civic politics: real operational experience and firsthand knowledge of how the system actually works.

He has seen the challenges facing Vancouver’s parks from the inside — aging infrastructure, budget pressures, growing service demands, and the increasing need to balance environmental stewardship with affordability and accessibility. He also knows what is possible when public services are supported by practical leadership, smart governance, and responsible financial management.

Mark is passionate about maintaining an independent and financially viable Park Board, while modernizing how it operates to better serve residents across Vancouver. He believes Vancouver can protect community assets while creating new, thoughtful revenue opportunities, reducing pressure on taxpayers while improving recreation services for families.

One of Mark’s proudest accomplishments during his tenure with the Park Board was helping transform the concession portfolio into a more financially sustainable model. Projects such as the partnership with Batch at Kitsilano Pool demonstrated how creative thinking and public-private partnerships can revitalize public spaces while generating meaningful revenue to support parks and recreation programming.

A proud Strathcona resident, Shayla brings expertise in community engagement, social impact, sport and recreation, and education.

Shayla is passionate about investing in and revitalizing recreational centres and green spaces that reflect the diverse needs of Vancouver communities, while bringing back fun, accessible, and affordable festivals that create opportunities for connection across the city.

In her professional life, Shayla is a local educator, founder of PLANher Consulting, and a public historian specializing in Black history in British Columbia. She has spent the last several years leading work across education, sport, and community development; including developing curriculresources for the British Columbia Ministry of Education and Child Care, creating educational experiences connected to Hogan’s Alley history, advising organizations on equity and community engagement

Scott Jensen is a sitting Park Board Commissioner, and is seeking re-election with the Vancouver Liberals. When first elected in 2022, Scott became Chair of the Park Board, making him the first ever Indigenous chair. With his leadership and dedication, the Park Board has been able to implement 90% of the infrastructure plan, which includes two new community centres coming to Vancouver.

Throughout his career, Scott has been committed to building community, and supporting Vancouver as a teacher, a leader, and now as an elected official.

Scott is a proud third grade teacher with the Vancouver School Board at Lord Robert’s Elementary School. He is also a lifelong, passionate lacrosse player. As an Indigenous person, Scott sees lacrosse as the medicine game. It is a way to connect with community, to sport, and with your teammates. As a teacher, as a lacrosse player, and a devoted Vancouverite, Scott is committed to giving back to the spaces where we get to make those meaningful connections — our parks and recreation facilities.

Scott knows that Vancouver’s parks are integral green spaces, but they’re also so much more. They’re gathering places for families, for our communities, for seniors, our kids. With Scott’s leadership, they can remain places where generations to come will continue to improve their health and well-being, and connect with each other in community.

Scott Jensen is a must-must-must-elect to the Vancouver Park Board.

Amanda Bains is seeking election for Vancouver Park Board Commissioner as part of the Vancouver Liberals team. She wants to bring the perspective of a community leader to the Park Board to strengthen Vancouver’s social fabric and protect the spaces that are the most important to us.

Amanda is a fighter, and as a Park Board Commissioner will fight for you and your family, working with Vancouver City Council where she will fight for restored funding to Park Board, and is committed to ensuring that Vancouver’s increasingly dilapidated community centres are renewed, repaired and renovated.

Amanda is committed to ensuring that seasonal and community pools are constructed in every neighbourhood, committed to the provision of outdoor swimming pools, wading pools and water-play areas in every neighbourhood across our city.

Amir Bajehkian is seeking election for Park Board Commissioner as part of the Vancouver Liberals team. Amir will employ his experience in advocacy at all levels of government, and in community engagement of New Canadians, to ensure our parks and facilities flourish for existing and future residents.

Amir grew up in Iran, often wondering how he could make a difference. Amir moved to Canada after beginning studies in aerospace engineering in Iran and completed his education here in physics, mechanical systems, and aircraft maintenance engineering. Amir’s career led him to work at YVR in various capacities including ramp agent, aircraft maintenance, and finally, as a flight data analyst, where he monitored helicopter flights for operational safety.

Amir’s community activism revolves around facilitating international credential recognition, human rights, election engagement, referendum campaigns, and bringing Farsi as a second language option to British Columbia’s schools.

Amir is running for Park Board Commissioner with the Vancouver Liberals because he believes our parks and recreation facilities are main hubs for people to connect with nature and their fellow Vancouverites. They enhance the lives of our residents and cannot be an afterthought for our municipal government. Amir is an ardent supporter of the Vancouver Liberals’ $1.35B plan to renew our community centres, parks, and pools as they need to be vibrant and usable for generations to come following years of neglect.

Amir also wants to protect the independence of the Park Board, to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity so that it functions properly as a democratically elected body.

Tricia Barker is seeking re-election for Park Board Commissioner as part of the Vancouver Liberals team. A core reason for Tricia’s candidacy is to be a voice and an advocate for seniors and people with disabilities (which categories VanRamblings currently finds ourselves in — and boy oh boy, can we tell you we need Tricia Barker to advocate for us, and for every other senior who uses our parks and recreation system).

In 2018, Tricia was elected as a Park Board Commissioner for the City of Vancouver where she worked to ensure that Vancouver’s parks were accessible to all, especially the elderly and vulnerable communities that she worked with as a healthcare practitioner. Tricia continues to work in fitness training and consulting to this day.

Quite simply, Wah Gee is one of our favourite people who live in the City of Vancouver. For months, Wah and a group of friends, each Sunday, went for a delicious and sumptuous dim sum lunch after church. Wah was always a favourite around the table.

Wah believes that essential to the livability of a city are safe, inclusive parks, streets, and community recreation facilities that are welcoming to people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. Wah is committed to the restoration commitment made by Vancouver Liberals Mayoral candidate, Kareem Allam, and will work with his fellow Park Board Commissioners to ensure funding is restored to Park Board, ensure that community pools are built in every neighbourhood across our city, and the Vancouver’s community centres — adjudicated last year by Vancouver’s Auditor General, Mike Macdonell that 11 community centres are in a severe state of disrepair, and require the immediate attention of Park Board Commissioners, and the elected officials at Vancouver City Hall.

Wah has undergraduate degrees in marine biology and elementary education, and a Master’s degree in educational leadership and administration, all from the University of British Columbia. Wah teaches in the Surrey school district, where he is active coaching and sponsoring extracurricular activities, and is an Indigenous Lead Teacher. Wah also holds staff and union leadership positions in the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation.

#VanPoli | VanRamblings Formally ENDORSES Kareem Allam to Become Vancouver’s Next Mayor

There are moments in the political life of a city when an election becomes about more than choosing a Mayor.

October 17, 2026, is one of those moments.

Vancouver is not simply deciding whether to give Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver another four years. Vancouver is deciding what kind of city it wants to become — and, more importantly, who the city is actually going to work for.

For the past four years, City Hall has too often appeared preoccupied with grand announcements, expensive projects, political theatre and the interests of the well-connected while the everyday infrastructure of neighbourhood life has deteriorated.

Libraries have faced cuts. Community facilities are aging. Swimming pools are disappearing. Parking meters have appeared around community amenities, our beaches, parks and community centres.

Families are struggling with the cost of living. Seniors are wondering where affordable recreation opportunities are going to come from. Young people increasingly question whether they can afford to remain in the city in which they grew up.

The next Mayor of Vancouver should you cast your ballot for Kareem Allam, Vancouver Liberals.

Into that vacuum comes Kareem Allam and the Vancouver Liberals.

There  is a compelling case to be made that Kareem Allam must become Vancouver’s most progressive Mayor in more than half a century.

Not because he comes from the traditional left.

Not because he comes from the traditional right.

But precisely because he doesn’t fit neatly into either category.

Kareem Allam’s political proposition is something Vancouver has desperately needed: a government organized around people rather than ideology.

The Vancouver Liberals’ stated goal is refreshingly straightforward: create a Vancouver where young people can stay, work, build a career and raise a family. Their platform combines affordability, public investment, stronger frontline services, parks and recreation, public safety, accountability and neighbourhood infrastructure.

That is progressive municipal government in its most practical form.

Kareem Allam: The Vancouver Mayor Who Will Get To Work on Day One

For Vancouver voters looking for a Mayor who can begin governing on the morning after the 2026 civic election, rather than spending the first year learning how City Hall works, Kareem Allam presents a compelling case.

The Vancouver Liberals’ Mayoral candidate is not simply a political newcomer with an attractive platform. He is a lifelong Vancouverite who has spent more than 25 years working in and around municipal, provincial and federal governments, working on public policy, Indigenous relations, health care, transportation and infrastructure.

Kareem’s career has given him something that is extraordinarily rare among candidates for municipal office: an understanding of government not merely from the outside, but from inside the machinery of government itself.

Kareem Allam did not enter Vancouver’s 2026 Mayoral race as a political novice. Far from it. Kareem has worked for elected politicians, inside government, in public institutions, on political campaigns and, critically, inside Vancouver’s Mayor’s office itself.

There is no other Mayoral candidate in 2026 who can match his breadth of experience.

Over his 25-year professional life, Kareem Allam has worked in government relations and public affairs, holding positions involving consequential policy areas facing British Columbia: energy, health care, transportation, infrastructure and Indigenous relations.

Kareem Allam worked with the Fraser Health Authority. He served on public and advisory boards. He became Director of Public Policy at the Vancouver Board of Trade. He developed extensive relationships with First Nations and worked on Indigenous economic-development issues.

Vancouver Magazine placed Kareem Allam among British Columbia’s 50 most powerful people, recognizing him as one of the province’s most sought-after political minds.

A Mayor must understand municipal bureaucracy, the Vancouver Charter, budgeting, procurement, zoning, permitting, capital budgets, collective agreements, infrastructure financing, development approvals, labour relations, intergovernmental negotiations, civic infrastructure, regional government, provincial jurisdiction and the relationship between elected officials and the professional bureaucracy.

Kareem Allam has spent his entire professional career learning precisely those systems.

Indeed, it is difficult to identify another 2026 Mayoral candidate who has worked so extensively across the federal, provincial and municipal spheres while also gaining experience inside Vancouver’s own Mayoral office. His career has included government-relations positions, senior policy work, public boards and direct municipal executive experience. He has served on the TransLink screening panel, and other public and advisory bodies. He currently serves on advisory bodies associated with the University of Victoria and Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

The Mayor of the City of Vancouver has to interact with Metro Vancouver.

With TransLink.

With the provincial government.

With Ottawa.

With developers.

With unions.

With neighbourhoods.

With First Nations.

With a bureaucracy employing thousands of people.

And then the Mayor has to get 10 Councillors to agree on what should actually happen.

This is not theory. It is governing.

And Kareem Allam has spent decades learning how to do it.

Kareem Allam’s political career is unusual because he has worked across ideological and partisan boundaries. Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, civic politicians, business leaders, public servants and Indigenous governments have all been part of his professional world.


In the 2024 British Columbia election, Kareem Allam inspired the NDP campaign for office.

It means Kareem Allam understands that government is not about finding people who agree with you.

It is about finding a way to get things done among people who don’t.

Former B.C. NDP cabinet minister Michelle Mungall joined the campaign back in September as an honourary co-chair, while Arminder Randhawa, a former B.C. NDP executive member and former Vancouver Board of Variance member, has described Kareem Allam as a thoughtful and pragmatic leader who brings people together.

Those are precisely the qualities Vancouver should be looking for.

Vancouver doesn’t need a Mayor who believes governing means announcing initiatives.

Vancouver needs a Mayor who understands implementation.

Consider housing.

Kareem Allam’s approach is revealing. Rather than simply promising to build more housing, he has focused on the regulatory machinery that determines whether housing actually gets built — including municipal permitting, building codes and bureaucratic duplication.

Not to mention which, a core focus of the Vancouver Liberals campaign for office revolves around renewing Vancouver’s commitment to the construction of housing co-operatives across our city, on City-owned land or provincial and federal Crown land, working with the President of the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC — who also happens to be the CEO of the Community Land Trust (CLT) — Thom Armstrong, towards expanding the  already existing, and wildly successful, Community Land Trust programme, while building thousands more of co-operative housing units across our city.

Do you know how much the construction of co-operative housing will cost taxpaypers? Nada, nothing, zero, zilch. Because those groups making application to construct a  housing co-operative will secure funding through a lending institution, the loan backed by the federal government through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

That is the language of someone who understands government.

The problem isn’t always that government doesn’t know what Vancouver needs.

The problem is that government often makes it extraordinarily difficult to deliver it.

Kareem Allam knows where the levers are.

He knows which government controls which lever.

He knows who has to be at the table.

And, having spent years dealing with senior governments, he knows how to pick up the telephone and get the right people on the other end.

Imagine a Mayor walking into City Hall on the first day of his administration already familiar with the bureaucracy, already understanding municipal government, already possessing relationships with provincial and federal officials, already knowing the political terrain and already having spent time inside the Mayor’s office.

That is a fundamentally different proposition from electing someone who will spend the first year learning the job.

The choice facing Vancouver voters is larger than a choice between political parties.

It is a choice between experience and apprenticeship.

Between knowing what government should do and knowing how to get things done.

Between another four years of political theatre and the possibility of a Mayor who can walk into the Mayor’s office on Day One and immediately begin governing.

Vancouver voters can rest assured that Kareem Allam understands the machinery required to turn an idea into policy, policy into a decision, and a decision into something residents can actually see, touch and use.

After the experience of the past four years, that distinction should matter enormously.

Kareem Allam may not be the loudest candidate in the 2026 Vancouver Mayoral race.

He may not be the candidate with the largest political organization.

But he may very well be the best-informed.

And when the doors of City Hall open on the morning after October 17, Vancouver doesn’t need another Mayor learning how to govern.

We need someone who already knows how.

An Affordability Agenda That Actually Reaches People’s Daily Lives

Of all the Mayoral campaigns seeking Vancouver’s vote, Kareem Allam and the Vancouver Liberals have put forward one of the most comprehensive affordability agendas.

Consider something as mundane — and as revealing — as parking.

The Vancouver Liberals would remove parking meters in front of beaches and community centres throughout Vancouver within their first year in office.

That may sound like a small issue.

It isn’t.

For a senior taking a child to a community centre, a parent bringing children to a neighbourhood programme, a family visiting the beach, or someone using a recreation facility because they cannot afford a private gym, another municipal fee can be the difference between participating and staying home.

Public spaces should actually feel public.

Vancouver’s parks and beaches are, for hundreds of thousands of residents, the closest thing they have to a backyard. They are playgrounds, fitness centres, meeting places, swimming areas, outdoor classrooms and places of refuge.

They should not be treated as revenue opportunities.

That philosophy runs through the Vancouver Liberals agenda.

Kareem Allam and the Vancouver Liberals are proposing an historic $1.35 billion investment in parks, recreation, pools and community infrastructure, accompanied by 400 new unionized frontline workers. The party explicitly argues that investing in parks, libraries and community spaces is part of creating safer neighbourhoods.

This is an important departure from the simplistic notion that public safety begins and ends with policing.

Of course Vancouver needs police.

But a child who has a safe place to play, a teenager who has somewhere to go after school, a senior who has an affordable fitness programme, a family with a functioning community and recreation centre nearby, and a neighbourhood with a well-maintained park with facilities in the park are all components of a safer city.

Community infrastructure is crime prevention infrastructure.

Fix The Community Centres — And Stop Governing Through Neglect

The Auditor General has already identified a serious problem.

A 2025 audit by Vancouver’s auditor general, Mike Macdonnell, found that Vancouver’s 24 recreation facilities face an infrastructure funding deficit of approximately $33 million a year, with many building systems already extended beyond their intended useful life.

That is not an abstract accounting problem.

It is what happens when a city delays maintenance until maintenance becomes reconstruction.

Kareem Allam understands this.

The Vancouver Liberals are proposing major investment in community centres, pools and parks rather than allowing these facilities to continue deteriorating. Kareem Allam has argued that failing to invest in capital infrastructure actually drives up operating costs because aging buildings become more expensive to maintain.

That is precisely the kind of municipal economics Vancouver needs.

Spend money where it makes people’s lives better.

Repair what is broken.

Build what communities need.

And stop confusing expensive government with effective government.

Vancouver Needs Community Pools In Every Neighbourhood

Perhaps nowhere is the difference between the Vancouver Liberals vision and the ABC vision more obvious than swimming pools.

The Vancouver Liberals have committed to a 50-metre pool, rather than accepting a 25-metre replacement for the Vancouver Aquatic Centre. Their platform argues that Vancouver already has among the lowest levels of public swimming-pool provision per capita in Canada.

Why should Vancouver settle for less?

A city of more than 600,000 people should be building recreation infrastructure for the next generation, not shrinking its ambitions to fit yesterday’s budget.

Kareem Allam’s agenda also envisions additional neighbourhood pools and water parks, including a long-overdue community pool in Mount Pleasant.

This is what a programme for the people actually looks like.

It looks like children learning to swim.

It looks like seniors exercising.

It looks like families having somewhere affordable to spend an afternoon.

It looks like hockey rinks, libraries, community centres and parks that are maintained, accessible and welcoming.

It looks remarkably like the kind of people-centred municipal agenda that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has brought to the international political conversation.

Save the Park Board, Restore the Park Board, Fund the Park Board

The Vancouver Liberals unapologetically defend Vancouver’s elected Park Board.

They argue that Vancouver needs a strong, independent and properly funded Park Board — not its elimination.

That is about more than institutional nostalgia.

The Park Board represents an important democratic principle: Vancouver’s parks belong to Vancouverites.

Restoring stable funding for parks and recreation means acknowledging that these services are not luxuries.

They are municipal necessities.

Did you know that prior to Vision Vancouver being elected to City Hall in 2008, that Vancouver spent 19.3% of the city budget on our parks and recreation system? In 2026, that figure has fallen to an unconscionable 7.9%. No wonder our parks look so neglected, and our community centres have been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.

The $1.35-billion Vancouver Liberals commitment would give the city an opportunity to address the accumulated infrastructure deficit while creating better parks, pools, community centres and recreational opportunities across all 23 neighbourhoods.

Finish What Vancouver Civic Governments Have Already Promised

A re-imagined Marpole Community Centre approved in a 2008 Capital Expenditure referendum. Not complete more than 18 years later. Only the Vancouver Liberals will complete the project.

There is another essential principle here: if government makes a commitment to a neighbourhood, government should keep it.

The long-planned renewal of the Marpole Community Centre is finally under construction, with completion expected early to mid 2027. The project will provide a renewed centre, childcare, a field house and new outdoor amenities.

But Vancouver’s broader history is filled with promises that have taken far too long to become reality.

A Vancouver Liberals administration would adopt a rule:

No more indefinite delays.

Where projects have been approved, promised or negotiated — as they were when voters went to the polls to approve the proposed Capital Expenditure budget, in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2022 — residents deserve a clear timetable, transparent financing and a government prepared to get the work done.

That includes ensuring that the community amenities associated with major developments actually materialize.

At Oakridge Park, QuadReal and Westbank are responsible for a major redevelopment that includes a community centre, library, performance area and childcare.

At River District, Wesgroup’s long-term plan includes a community centre as an important public amenity.

A government led by Kareem Allam would insist developers honour those commitments.

That is not anti-development.

It is pro-community development.

Food Security is Affordability, and Necessary in the City of Vancouver

Perhaps one of the most innovative elements of the Vancouver Liberals agenda is the proposed Food Hub Programme.

As VanRamblings has previously reported, Kareem Allam’s food-security vision draws inspiration from the University of British Columbia’s Community Food Hub, where the Food Hub Market operates as a not-for-profit community space offering affordable groceries and culturally diverse foods.

The concept is deceptively simple.

Use public resources and partnerships to make nutritious food more affordable.

Create neighbourhood-based food hubs.

Connect residents with community organizations.

Make food security part of a civic affordability policy rather than treating hunger exclusively as a charitable problem.

That matters because food insecurity is not confined to people without jobs.

It increasingly affects working families, students, seniors and people whose incomes simply cannot keep pace with Vancouver’s extraordinary cost of living.

Food security is affordability.

And affordability is the defining municipal issue of 2026.

A Vancouver Liberal Commitment: Taxes People Can Actually Afford 

Kareem Allam has committed to limiting annual property-tax increases to the rate of inflation, or less, per year.

That is an important commitment because Vancouver citizens deserve predictability.

Under Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver, the Vancouver Liberals point out, property taxes have risen by 26%. Kareem Allam has argued that the city’s budget grew from approximately $1.7 billion when Sim inherited it to approximately $2.4 billion, without a corresponding improvement in frontline services.

The question Vancouver voters should be asking is simple:

If taxes keep rising, where is the improvement in our daily lives?

Kareem Allam’s answer is to redirect spending toward frontline workers and core services.

Four hundred new frontline employees.

Better garbage collection.

Better road maintenance.

Ban Bitcoin cryptocurrency ATMs on the DTES and take the fight to the drug dealers — not the street level drug dealers, but their suppliers;

Develop a methamphetamine — the leading cause of violent incidents that puts people at risk — strategy, just like Premier Wab Kinew has done in Manitoba (a plan that is working!);

Address homelessness in a humane and caring manner consistent with the values of the vast majority of us who call Vancouver home;

Protect local businesses during transit expansion, by reducing property taxes by 50% for the duration of construction;

Build more public washrooms, including within our parks (I mean, when the kids have gotta pee, they’ve gotta pee);

Reinstate library funding and hours, cut by a heartless and cruel Ken Sim administration that have so weakened these vital public spaces and community services.

Better parks.

Better recreation facilities.

Better basic services.

No property taxes levied on medical centres.

Downsize a bloated middle management bureaucracy at Vancouver City Hall (do we really need 95 people working in Vancouver’s communications department, or employ more middle managers in our development services and planning departments than on the ground CUPE workers — like plan checkers — who do the real work!);

That is not austerity.

It is prioritization.

A City Hall That Isn’t Afraid of But Actually Welcomes the Public

A progressive government must also be a transparent government.

The Vancouver Liberals have proposed cheaper public access to government records, a stronger Integrity Commissioner and greater accountability at City Hall.

That should include reducing or eliminating Freedom of Information fees for journalists and members of the public wherever possible.

Government records belong to the public.

Journalists should not have to fight City Hall to discover what City Hall is doing.

And citizens should not have to pay excessive fees to learn how their own government spends their money.

Transparency isn’t an administrative courtesy.

It is democracy.

Even The Rats Living in Our Neighbourhoods Are Telling us Something

And then there is the rat problem.

Yes, the rat problem.

The Vancouver Liberals have made tackling Vancouver’s growing rodent infestation a public-health priority, proposing a blue-ribbon panel of experts to develop a comprehensive strategy.

It might sound almost comical.

It isn’t.

A city that cannot keep its streets, parks and public spaces clean and safe cannot call itself well governed.

The rat problem is about sanitation, waste management, infrastructure, construction practices and public health.

Sometimes the most progressive thing government can do is simply do the basics properly.

The Remarkable Coalition Allam’s Vancouver Liberals Have Built

Perhaps the strongest argument for Kareem Allam is not simply his platform.

It is the coalition he has built.

The Vancouver Liberals are attempting something Vancouver civic politics has rarely seen: bringing together people from dramatically different political traditions around a shared municipal agenda.

Their candidates include people with labour and NDP backgrounds, progressive activists, businesspeople, academics, former BC Liberals and former Conservatives.

Jessica Walton, for example, brings years of feminist, environmental, labour and political activism to the campaign, along with experience as a BCGEU shop steward and frontline government worker. Mention should also be made that Jessica Walton was recently endorsed by Unite Here Local 40, one of Vancouver’s most progressive unions.

John Coupar brings 11 years of Park Board experience and a long record of advocacy for Vancouver’s parks and cultural institutions.

And the coalition continues to expand.

On August 27, former BC NDP cabinet minister Michelle Mungall and former BC NDP executive member Arminder Randhawa were announced as honorary co-chairs of the campaign. Ms. Mungall served as B.C.’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources under John Horgan, while Ms. Randhawa has extensive experience in municipal politics and advocacy concerning intimate-partner violence, policing and women’s and children’s safety.

Their presence says something important.

This isn’t simply another ideological faction fighting another ideological faction.

It is an attempt to build a unity government for Vancouver.

As Ms. Mungall put it, she was impressed by Kareem Allam’s emphasis on frontline workers and by the work ethic of the candidates.

Ms. Randhawa described Mr. Allam as a pragmatic leader who brings people together.

And that may be precisely what Vancouver needs.

A Municipal Government of Civic Reconciliation and Unity

Vancouver is an extraordinarily diverse city.

Vancouver Liberal Armor Valor of Filipino descent running for a seat on City Council

The 2021 Census counted 38,605 Filipino residents in the City of Vancouver alone, while Filipino Canadians represented the third-largest racialized group in the Vancouver census metropolitan area.

That diversity deserves political representation.

But reconciliation also means something larger than ethnicity.

It means reconciling competing political traditions.

Labour and business.

Progressives and conservatives.

Social democrats and Liberals.

Immigrants and people whose families have lived here for generations.

Young people and seniors.

Renters and homeowners.

Downtown residents and suburban neighbourhoods.

People who disagree profoundly about politics but agree that Vancouver should be affordable, safe, clean, vibrant and welcoming.

That is the Vancouver Liberals experiment.

And it is a worthwhile experiment.

Why Kareem Allam Needs a Majority at Vancouver City Hall

But there is a final point Vancouver voters need to understand.

Electing Kareem Allam as Mayor will not be enough.

If Vancouver wants the programme described above — the pools, community centres, parks, food hubs, frontline workers, public-space investments, tax discipline, transparency reforms and neighbourhood improvements — Kareem Allam needs Councillors and Park Board Commissioners who share that agenda.

A Mayor Kareem Allam cannot govern alone.

A Mayor Kareem Allam needs a Council capable of passing budgets.

A Mayor Kareem Allam needs Park Board Commissioners committed to rebuilding Vancouver’s recreation system.

A Mayor Kareem Allam needs School Board trustees who understand the needs of families and children.

And a Mayor Kareem Allam needs a political team capable of turning campaign promises into municipal policy.

That is why Vancouver needs to elect a majority Vancouver Liberal civic administration on October 17.

This is not about giving Kareem Allam a blank cheque.

Quite the opposite.

It is about giving Vancouver voters the opportunity to hold an entire governing team accountable for a coherent programme.

For too long, Vancouver has been governed through fragmented politics, institutional conflict and competing agendas.

Kareem Allam is offering something different.

A plan.

A team.

A coalition.

And, most importantly, a willingness to govern.

Vancouver’s Choice: Vote Kareem Allam and the Vancouver Liberals

The choice facing Vancouver on October 17 could hardly be clearer.

One path leads back to four more years of the politics and priorities of the past four years.

The other asks Vancouver to try something fundamentally different.

A city where parks are treated as public assets rather than revenue opportunities.

A city where libraries are strengthened rather than diminished.

A city where community centres are repaired before they become catastrophes.

A city where children have swimming pools.

A city where seniors have affordable recreation.

A city where seniors and persons with disabilities can traverse our crumbling and uneven sidewalks, as a Vancouver Liberals administration — working with all of the elected on Vancouver City Council — will embark on a programme to renew sidewalks across the city.

A city where families can buy groceries without being pushed to the edge.

A city where property taxes are predictable, at or below inflation.

A city where developers are required to deliver the amenities they promised.

A city where City Hall welcomes scrutiny rather than resists it.


Jettisoned by Ken Sim / ABC in 2022, Kareem Allam will renew the ‘Healthy City for All’ initiative

A city where public safety means police, yes — but also clean streets, functioning neighbourhoods, recreation, mental-health services, public spaces and communities in which people actually know one another.

A city where government works for the people who live here.

That is why Kareem Allam represents something larger than another Mayoral candidacy.

Kareem Allam represents the possibility of a progressive, pragmatic, people-first government that breaks with the politics of the past half-century.

The Vancouver Liberals are not perfect. No political party is.

But in 2026, they have something increasingly rare in municipal politics:

An Action Plan That Will Transform Vancouver Into a Livable City

And on October 17, Vancouver voters have an opportunity to put that plan into action.

If Vancouver wants the change we so desperately need, we cannot settle for changing the Mayor while leaving the political machinery of City Hall essentially unchanged.

Vancouver needs a government capable of delivering.

We need a government willing to invest in people.

We need a government willing to listen.

We need a government willing to cross partisan boundaries rather than deepen them.

We need a government that believes public spaces belong to the public.

We need a government that understands that affordability is not a slogan but something measured in grocery bills, parking fees, property taxes, recreation fees and whether a family can afford to stay in the city it calls home.

And above all, Vancouver needs a Mayor who understands that government exists to serve the public — not the other way around.

That Mayor of Vancouver, in 2026, should and must be Kareem Allam.

And the government he needs with him is a majority Vancouver Liberal administration.

October 17 is Vancouver’s opportunity to choose a different future.

Vote for Kareem Allam.

Vote Vancouver Liberal. And give Vancouver the government we have all been waiting for.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 2026 𝗩𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 ONLY 𝗰𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗰 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗩𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆.

#TogetherWeCan

#VIFF45: A Festival to Remember — The Films, the Discoveries, and the Magic of Cinema

A three-part VanRamblings wrap-up of the 45th Vancouver International Film Festival | October 1–11, 2026

Part One: A Final Weekend Worth Celebrating

There is something gloriously bittersweet about the final weekend of the Vancouver International Film Festival. For 10 days, Vancouver’s moviegoing community has been living inside a world of discovery, moving from one cinema to another, comparing notes over coffee, arguing about performances, falling hopelessly in love with films we could never have anticipated, and wondering how on earth we are going to fit just one more screening into an already impossibly crowded schedule.

And then, suddenly, the end is in sight.

The 45th annual Vancouver International Film Festival has given Vancouver audiences an embarrassment of cinematic riches, with films arriving from Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Telluride, Toronto and the New York Film Festival. The final weekend offers one last opportunity to catch some of the year’s most accomplished international films, several of which have already become personal favourites here at VanRamblings.

Friday, October 9, begins with a particularly tantalizing double bill at the Park Theatre. At 6:15 p.m., Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back offers another opportunity to experience the director’s extraordinary gift for finding tenderness in the everyday. Kore-eda has spent a career exploring the fragile bonds between parents and children, the families we inherit and the families we create. Here, he turns his attention to youth and the nature of storytelling, bringing his customary grace and emotional intelligence to a film that understands how imagination can transform the lives of young people. His work has a way of making the apparently ordinary feel quietly miraculous.

The Friday double bill continues with James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which has attracted considerable attention on the festival circuit. The intimate crime drama features Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, three performers whose contrasting screen personas promise a compelling study in loyalty, ambition and the dangerous entanglements of criminal life. Gray is a filmmaker fascinated by family, betrayal and the moral compromises people make in pursuit of security. With a cast of this calibre, Paper Tiger is a particularly enticing prospect.

The final weekend also brings a remarkable collection of films shared with the prestigious New York Film Festival. Friday’s offerings include Once Upon a Time in Harlem and 9 Temples to Heaven at Fifth Avenue, with Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva at International Village 9 at 8 p.m. and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur at the Lindsay Family Stage on Granville Island at 8:30 p.m. For festivalgoers who relish the experience of discovering a film before it reaches a wider audience, these screenings are precisely what VIFF is all about.

And then there is Lukas Dhont’s Coward, VanRamblings’ favourite film at VIFF 45, screening Friday evening at the Park Theatre. The Belgian filmmaker’s First World War drama, whose stars Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared the Best Actor prize at Cannes, is a work of breathtaking emotional delicacy. More about that extraordinary film in Part Two of VanRamblings final column on VIFF 45.

At 9 p.m. Friday, the Vancouver Playhouse welcomes La Bola Negra, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s ambitious historical melodrama, which won the Audience Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Moving between 1932, 1937 and 2017, the film interweaves the lives of three gay protagonists, giving a traditional historical epic a thrillingly contemporary queer sensibility. The filmmakers also shared the Best Director prize at Cannes. It is precisely the sort of ambitious, emotionally expansive storytelling that makes international cinema so rewarding.

Saturday, October 10, brings another remarkable sequence of screenings. At 11 a.m., The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens the day’s programme at the Vancouver Playhouse. At 1:45 p.m., Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, Japan’s Oscar submission, offers a quietly expansive meditation on human connection. Making his French-language debut, Hamaguchi explores the fragile structures that bind us to one another, with luminous, Cannes-recognized performances from Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto. This is cinema that understands the expressive power of conversation, observation and silence.

The evening’s centrepiece is Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, VIFF’s Closing Gala, at 6:15 p.m. at the Vancouver Playhouse. With John Malkovich leading the cast, the film arrives amid considerable awards-season anticipation. McDonagh’s gift for combining dark humour, moral unease and unpredictable human behaviour makes this a fittingly provocative way to approach the festival’s conclusion.

And for those determined to make the absolute most of Saturday, there is a 9:15 p.m. screening of NAZA at the Park Theatre. Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the investigative documentary examines Israeli military targeting practices in Gaza through interviews with military insiders. The title refers to a reported intelligence euphemism for anticipated civilian deaths in airstrikes. Produced by Jonathan Glazer and James Wilson, the team behind The Zone of Interest, NAZA has become one of the festival’s most controversial and politically urgent films. Its filmmakers argue that the systems used to calculate civilian casualties reveal a devastating process of dehumanization; its claims and implications have provoked fierce debate. The film received the Special Jury Prize at Venice. Whatever one’s response, this is documentary filmmaking that insists audiences confront uncomfortable questions about technology, accountability and the human cost of war.

Sunday, October 11, is the final day of VIFF 45, and the schedule is hardly a gentle winding-down. La Gradiva returns at the Lindsay Family Stage, while Everytime screens at Fifth Avenue. Mina Shum’s Whatcha Want brings a distinctly Vancouver perspective to the final day’s offerings at the Rio Theatre at 3:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Minotaur, Zvyagintsev’s Grand Prix winner at Cannes, offers another opportunity to experience the work of a formidable contemporary filmmaker.

At the Park Theatre, Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care screens at 6 p.m., followed by Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas at 9:15 p.m. And at 6:15 p.m., the Rio Theatre screens I Play Rocky, one of VanRamblings’ other personal favourites of the festival.

The beauty of VIFF, of course, is that the festival’s final screening need not be the final opportunity to see a film. Programmer Tom Charity and the VIFF Centre regularly help bring festival discoveries back to Vancouver audiences, while other titles secure conventional theatrical engagements across Metro Vancouver. It is worth keeping an eye on the VIFF Centre’s subsequent programming rather than assuming that missing a festival screening means missing a film forever.

But first, there are two films that deserve a special place in this year’s festival conversation.

Coward: Lukas Dhont’s Most Beautiful Film Yet

VanRamblings’ favourite film of VIFF 45 | Directed by Lukas Dhont | Belgium, France, Netherlands

Some films move you. Others quietly rearrange the furniture of your heart. And then there is Lukas Dhont’s Coward, an achingly beautiful, tenderly observed, emotionally transporting work of cinema that left VanRamblings with the extraordinary conviction that we had just encountered one of the finest films of the year — of any year.

At the 79th Cannes Film Festival, Dhont’s First World War drama earned the Best Actor prize for its remarkable young stars, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne. Their performances are the beating heart of a film that could easily have succumbed to the familiar conventions of the tragic queer period drama, yet instead finds something infinitely more generous, more courageous and ultimately more life-affirming.

Set amid the brutal realities of the Belgian trenches, Coward introduces us to Pierre (Macchia), a young soldier arriving at the front eager to prove himself in a world in which courage is measured in blood, obedience and the willingness to march towards almost certain death. But Pierre’s understanding of the world begins to change when he meets Francis (Campagne), a fellow soldier with an unexpected idea: to stage a theatrical performance for their comrades.

It is an audacious proposal in a place where imagination might seem like an unaffordable luxury. Yet the makeshift theatre becomes something extraordinary — a sanctuary of beauty, laughter and human connection amid the machinery of destruction. And between Pierre and Francis, something tender and transformative begins to emerge.

Dhont, whose Girl and Close established him as one of contemporary cinema’s most sensitive observers of adolescent vulnerability, has made his most mature film to date. Here, his storytelling possesses an emotional restraint that makes every fleeting glance, every tentative touch and every moment of physical closeness feel almost unbearably precious.

The chemistry between Macchia and Campagne is simply magnificent. Dhont has a tactile, compassionate understanding of how men — queer men especially — watch other men, the way attraction and affection can reveal themselves in a look held a second too long, or in a gesture whose significance cannot safely be spoken aloud. Coward is, by turns, breathtakingly violent and sweetly, shiveringly sensual. Its most intimate moments feel less like conventional romantic scenes than like the discovery of an entirely new language.

And what a relief it is that Dhont refuses to drown that love in tragedy.

Unlike so many period tales of forbidden queer affection, Coward is not interested in dripping its canvas in despair. Dhont wants to leave us with a glimmer of hope. Actually, more than a glimmer: a wry smile of anticipation, a suggestion that all is not lost, that love can find a way even when the world seems determined to extinguish it.

This is a recuperation of queer representation as resilient and hopeful. Happiness — or, perhaps more importantly, contentment — is possible when we seek it and seize it. That assertion feels quietly radical in a film set amid the carnage of the First World War, where tenderness itself becomes an act of resistance.

Dhont does not minimize the horror surrounding his characters. Rather, he understands that the existence of beauty in terrible circumstances does not diminish suffering; it makes the preservation of our humanity all the more urgent. The theatre they create becomes an emblem of what art can accomplish when the world has seemingly abandoned its obligations to the living.

There is something almost miraculous about the film’s tonal balance. The violence is genuinely frightening, the romance achingly delicate, the humour unexpectedly liberating. Dhont allows the film to breathe, trusting his actors and the emotional intelligence of his audience. He never insists that we feel something when a glance or a silence can accomplish so much more.

And when Coward reaches its final passages, its hopefulness feels neither sentimental nor cheaply won. It emerges from everything these men have endured, from the risks they have taken and from the simple, extraordinary recognition that another person can make a life worth living.

This is sensitive storytelling at its most affecting: sweetly played, elegantly mounted, reaching towards hope not in light of war’s horrors, but in spite of them.

For VanRamblings, Coward is the film of VIFF 45. It is a reminder that cinema’s greatest achievement is not always to break our hearts.

Sometimes, it is to show us how beautifully they can mend.

VanRamblings Grade: A+


Fatherland: A Haunted Masterpiece of Memory and Exile

VanRamblings feels strongly Fatherland is the best film to screen at VIFF 45, one of the best films of the year | Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski | Poland, Germany, Italy, France

If Coward is the film that most tenderly captured VanRamblings heart at VIFF 45, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland is the film that most completely convinced us of cinema’s extraordinary power to transform history into poetry.

Pawlikowski, the modern master behind Ida and Cold War, has fashioned another immaculate black-and-white work of European cinema, an 82-minute elegy of such precision, intelligence and emotional depth that its brevity feels almost audacious.

Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Fatherland is a gorgeous, gripping drama whose resonance extends far beyond its carefully chosen postwar setting.

The film centres on Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller), the actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, sixteen years after fleeing Nazi Germany for the safety of the United States, Mann returns to his native country. Accompanied by Erika, he embarks on an emotionally fraught road trip in a black Buick, traveling from American-controlled Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar through a Germany devastated by war and divided by ideology.

It is a journey across a shattered nation, but also across the wreckage of a family.

Pawlikowski understands that the aftermath of catastrophe is not merely a matter of rebuilding cities or redrawing borders. It is also about confronting the moral compromises of the past, the things people did, the things they failed to do, and the stories they tell themselves to make those failures bearable.

Mann is a towering literary figure, a man whose opposition to Hitler forced him into exile. Yet the film is not content to celebrate the Nobel laureate as a convenient moral monument. His relationship with Erika reveals a more complicated figure, a father whose public stature and intellectual authority cannot protect him from the consequences of private shortcomings.

Hüller, one of contemporary cinema’s most compelling actors, is extraordinary as Erika. Her performance is a study in intelligence, resentment, wit and barely contained pain. She gives the film its emotional counterweight, suggesting a lifetime of accumulated disappointment beneath the surface of an apparently formidable woman. Zischler is equally compelling, creating a Mann whose authority is unmistakable but whose capacity for self-understanding remains uncertain.

The relationship between them is the film’s beating heart. Every exchange seems to carry the weight of conversations that have never taken place, apologies never offered, affection expressed too late or withheld altogether.

Shot by cinematographer Łukasz Żal in exquisitely chiselled monochrome, Fatherland is a visual marvel. The landscape passes through the car windows like a wounded memory, the ruins and the uneasy coexistence of two political systems rendering history tangible. Pawlikowski’s compositions are austere but never sterile; his camera finds beauty in the contours of a devastated landscape without ever pretending that beauty can erase what happened there.

As the journey progresses eastwards, the film becomes increasingly preoccupied with grief and the responsibility of the artist. What does it mean to create art in the aftermath of catastrophe? Can intellectual achievement compensate for emotional failure? And what obligation does a celebrated writer have to the people closest to him, rather than to the abstract ideals he represents?

These questions converge in a beautiful, sad epiphany, delivered with the divine economy that distinguishes Pawlikowski’s finest work.

There are moments when Fatherland feels chilly, even deliberately withholding. But that restraint is part of its achievement. Pawlikowski trusts us to recognize what remains unspoken, to find the sorrow in a pause, the tenderness in an awkward gesture, the devastation in an exchange that appears almost incidental.

The result is a film of haunted, ravaged beauty. Its mournful meditation on national identity, private tragedy and the dangers of trying to remain apolitical in deeply political times speaks directly to our own fractured moment. The cultural riches that survive catastrophe offer no easy redemption, but they can provide small, crucial forms of solace.

Fatherland is an elegant, engrossing masterpiece, an extraordinarily economical film that leaves behind an emotional echo far greater than its running time might suggest.

If VIFF 45 has offered a reminder of why we go to the movies, Pawlikowski’s film supplies one of the most compelling answers: to experience the past not as a distant abstraction, but as a living, breathing presence in the room.

This is a gorgeous poem of a film, and, for VanRamblings, the best film to screen at this year’s festival.

VanRamblings Grade: A+


Part Three: The Movies, the Memories, and the Promise of What’s Next

What, then, has VIFF 45 achieved?

First, it has reminded us that the Vancouver International Film Festival remains one of this city’s most important cultural institutions. For eleven days, it has created a space in which audiences can encounter stories beyond their own experience, discover filmmakers they might otherwise never have encountered, and engage with works that challenge, provoke, entertain and occasionally change the way we see the world.

Second, this year’s festival has offered compelling evidence that 2026 may be one of the strongest years for cinema in a decade, both domestically and internationally.

From the moral complexities of Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord to the exquisite emotional restraint of Coward, from Pawlikowski’s haunted Fatherland to the imaginative daring of films arriving from Japan, Spain and elsewhere, the year’s finest work has demonstrated that ambitious filmmaking is alive and flourishing. Cannes’ awards have been especially revealing, recognizing films that are artistically adventurous while remaining profoundly attentive to the human condition.

And what a year for Canadian cinema, too. Mina Shum’s Whatcha Want is a welcome reminder of the importance of Vancouver filmmakers telling stories that emerge from the communities they know, while the festival’s wider Canadian programme has offered audiences opportunities to encounter the country’s extraordinary range of voices and perspectives. A healthy film culture depends not simply on importing the world’s best work, but on creating the conditions in which our own filmmakers can flourish.

There is, of course, a practical challenge awaiting us after the closing credits roll. How do we sustain the excitement? How do we ensure that these films find audiences beyond the festival’s eleven-day window?

The work of VIFF Centre programmer Tom Charity, and the subsequent theatrical engagements that some festival titles will secure across Metro Vancouver, is essential. A festival should be a beginning, not an ending. The conversation that starts in a crowded cinema ought to continue over dinner, in the pages of publications such as VanRamblings, and in the choices we make when deciding what to watch next.

Most importantly, VIFF reminds us that watching movies together is an act of community. We sit in the darkness beside strangers, laughing at the same unexpected joke, holding our breath through the same moment of suspense, or emerging into the Vancouver night with tears in our eyes and the sudden urge to talk to someone about what we have just experienced. For a few precious hours, another person’s story becomes part of our own.

That is the enduring magic of cinema. It allows us to inhabit lives we have never lived, to recognize ourselves in people whose circumstances are utterly unlike our own, and to discover that tenderness, courage, grief, longing and hope are not the possessions of any one nation or culture. They belong to all of us.

As VIFF 45 draws to a close, VanRamblings find ourselves thinking again about Coward, about those young soldiers who discover a measure of beauty in a world consumed by violence, and about Fatherland, with its wounded landscapes and its insistence that the past must be confronted if we are to make sense of the present. These films are very different, yet both understand that art can preserve something precious when the world seems determined to destroy it.

And perhaps that is the most hopeful thing we can take away from this year’s festival.

In a time of political division, technological upheaval and genuine uncertainty about the future, filmmakers continue to make works of astonishing beauty, intelligence and compassion. Audiences continue to seek them out. Cinemas continue to fill with people willing to give themselves over to a story.

For eleven days, Vancouver has been a city of movie lovers, united by curiosity and the shared pleasure of discovery. The festival ends, but the films remain with us, becoming part of our private histories, our conversations and our understanding of one another.

Here’s to VIFF 46. Here’s to the filmmakers who will surprise us, the performances that will break our hearts, and the stories that will remind us what we share.

And here’s to the simple, extraordinary miracle of sitting in a darkened cinema, surrounded by strangers, and discovering that, for a little while, we are all watching the world together.