With all due respect to Ms. Boyle, VanRamblings finds her remarks to the crowd of well-wishers and campaign volunteers at Saturday’s election night party to be not only ungenerous on a night of celebration for all the candidates who were victorious, and all the other candidates who ran campaigns of conscience, but to also be untrue & needlessly provocative.
Not to mention, just plain wrong & unbecoming of who we know her to be.
And while we’re at it, may we also add: dismissive of the humanity and integrity of her fellow newly electeds to Vancouver City Council — there’s nothing like passing judgment on people you’ve never met, we always say.
What a damn poor way to begin her tenure as a Vancouver City Councillor.
Whether Christine Boyle realizes it or not: Adriane Carr is a progressive who means well for our city.
Pete Fry is one of the humblest, most outstanding person of conscience and character we have ever met and worked with.
Melissa De Genova — for all that she is dismissed and demeaned in the ugly miasma that is Vancouver politics, by her own party and others, including in Ms. Boyle’s worrisome and intemperate remarks above — means well for our city, is far more progressive than she is given credit for, and is an elected who long ago earned our deep respect and admiration.
Jean Swanson = split Council? Uh, no.
Michael Wiebe ran, by far, the best and most expansive, not to mention, the most energized campaign of any of the candidates seeking office in the 2018 Vancouver civic election cycle, and was elected to office because he, too, is a person of conscience who means well for our city.

Now you know, given that we spoke or otherwise communicated with newly-elected Councillor Boyle most days over the past six months, Christine Boyle might well have asked us of our informed assessment of the victorious candidates whose names appear above and below.
Newly-elected Councillor Boyle chose to do so. Why not? Oh, we could offer speculative reasons. Perhaps haughtiness on the part of Ms. Boyle, that she did not seek our counsel on those persons with whom she will now be employed as the people’s civic representative at City Hall the next 4 years?
Whatever the case, by the intemperate remarks made during her election night speech, Ms. Boyle has done damage (not irreparable damage, but damage nonetheless) to her near nascent term on Vancouver City Council, not to mention the damage she has unconsciously perpetrated on the well-meaning persons of conscience with whom she soon will be sitting at the circular table inside Council chambers at Vancouver City Hall.
Lisa Dominato, recent Vancouver School Board trustee, a person of conscience, and an accomplished woman of substance and political élan, Rebecca Bligh who, as we have written of her previously, just knocks our socks off and represents only one of two diversity City Councillors elected on Saturday evening, October 20th, and …
Sarah Kirby-Yung, whose “win” on Saturday night fills us with so much hope for our future that we are near to bursting.
A split Council, Ms. Boyle?
Not on your life. Your fellow Councillors represent accomplished women (8 WOMEN City Councillors — it is to weep with joy — women of conscience who, working with she and Mayor-elect Kennedy Stewart, WILL build the city we need). Does Ms. Boyle honestly think that the five Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillors are going to oppose an affordable housing plan that includes co-and-co-op housing, and social housing built on City land, and federal and provincial Crown land? They’d be pretty nasty people if they did — nothing we know of at least four of the elected NPA Councillors would suggest them to be anything other than supporters of Vancouver City Hall’s gender variant policy, indigenous reconciliation strategy, women’s equity strategy, and who would stand foresquare, shoulder to shoulder with Ms. Boyle to support initiatives that oppose hate speech and conduct, and who would be anything less than supportive of environmental initiatives. Naïve, you say? That allegation was bandied about quite a bit during the election campaign, targeted to both Ms. Boyle & VanRamblings. Tch, tch. Nope ain’t havin’ any of it. No siree, Jane & Bob.

Published the first time VanRamblings met Christine Boyle, back in March, at a COPE coalition exploratory meeting. We were inspired by her then, we’re still inspired by her

Together, newly-elected Vancouver City Councillors Christine Boyle, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Pete Fry, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Rebecca Bligh, Adriane Carr, Lisa Dominato, Melissa De Genova and perhaps even Councillor Colleen Hardwick will, as we have written previously about Councillor Boyle, become just as smitten with our newly-elected OneCity Vancouver City Councillor as every other person who has ever met her — and who will come to feel compelled by this entirely tremendous catalyst of change for the better, on our incoming, progressive and change-making City Council.
Yes, in time, they too, these newly-electeds or returned-to-office City Councillors, will come to see within her what VanRamblings knows exists within her: that, as is the case with her very special and meaningful for our city fellow newly-electeds, Christine Boyle is a good person, a person who means well for our city, who will be a participant in the process of helping all of her fellow electeds realize their dreams for achieving the city we need, the city we need for all of us.

VanRamblings has identified Christine Boyle as a member of the historic trinity of change candidates — the other two members of this trinity, the Greens’ Pete Fry & COPE’s Derrick O’Keefe — who working together with their party running mates will effectively work to build the city we need. I’ll
What does all of the above mean for you, for your life in the city, and the livability of Vancouver going forward? As is the case with must-elects Pete Fry and Derrick O’Keefe, Christine Boyle is committed to …

• Public amenities. After 10 years of woeful underfunding of Vancouver’s parks and recreation system, Christine Boyle is committed to the growth and renewal of this critical public infrastructure;

• Affordable housing in every neighbourhood. Christine Boyle’s one city for all programme recognizes housing as a human right; she will work to build 3500 units a year of low cost housing for millennials, seniors, working people earning under $55,000 a year, with a mix of co-and-co-op housing, social housing and rental buildings where residents would pay no more than 30% of their income on meeting their housing needs.

  Christine Boyle on City Council will work with her fellow Councillors to set a goal of 50% below-market-rate housing, built on city-owned land, as well as provincial & federal Crown land, on a leasehold basis, construction costs to be paid through developer community amenity contributions, federal and provincial funding, and a speculation land value capture tax;

• Enhancing and building on Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan. From working to make walking, cycling and public transit the preferred transportation options, to leading the world in green building design, eliminating Vancouver’s dependence on fossil fuels, creating a zero waste economy, ensuring that we have the cleanest air and water of any city in the world, and creating incomparable access to our green spaces, Christine Boyle is the environmental candidate in the 2018 election;
• Small business. Christine Boyle is committed to lowering small business tax, while having major corporate business pay a fairer share of tax.

Christine Boyle, in concert with her fellow City Councillors, will work with the provincial government to shorten the timelines for rollout of $10-a-day child care, while also making known the need for more money for transit, community shuttle bus, and overnight Skytrain and Canada Line service.

Child care centres established in housing co-op developments, as is the case at the 135-unit Railyard Housing Co-op, built on city land, the construction and materials paid for by Concert Properties through an arrangement with Vancouver’s Community Land Trust, a re-opening of The Playhouse as a year-round theatre company servicing all other theatre companies in Vancouver, continuity of care seniors housing built in every neighbourhood, and keeping our streets and our boulevards clean and groomed so it might once more be said that Vancouver is not only the most beautiful city on the continent, but the cleanest and most welcoming city.

OneCity Vancouver co-founders, Christine Boyle, Cara Ng, and Alison Atkinson (Anna Chudnovsky missing from photo) working during last year’s Vancouver civic by-election

A troubling feature of the 2018 Vancouver civic election is, as Christine Boyle writes on her campaign website, “the toxic tone of politics online.”
Whether it be from the left or from the right, women candidates in the 2018 Vancouver civic election have too often found themselves the target of nasty commentary about their candidacies, and that includes — we are sad to report — One City’s Christine Boyle, who was able, in a reasoned manner to respond to noxious online commentary with a measured tone.

The word most often employed by those who have either just met her, or who have known Christine Boyle for awhile, is smitten. How could anyone not be? Just watch the video above, and listen to what Christine Boyle has to say, and you will come to realize — as all of the other candidates in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election acknowledge — Christine Boyle is a transformational candidate for Vancouver City Council, and perhaps the single most important candidate for civic office of our lifetime.

VanRamblings urges you to take this list to the polls when you vote, referring to the graphic while looking at your smart phone. Easy enough to copy the graphic, and place it into your photos app. Otherwise, you can print VanRamblings’ endorsement list — as hundreds have — and take it to the polls. We flat out guarantee that this is the City Council, School Board and Park Board you want to elect on Saturday, October 20th!

VanRamblings’ City Council endorsement rationale is available here.
VanRamblings’ School Board endorsement rationale is available here.
VanRamblings’ Park Board endorsement rationale may be found here.
VanRamblings’ all women slate for Council may be found here.