All posts by Raymond Tomlin

About Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

#ArtsFriday | Passing | Searing, Heartbreaking, Tragic Cinema | #Netflix

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Début film by Rebecca Hall (left), Passing, stars Tessa Thompson (centre) & Ruth Negga

A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of a 1920s-era Harlem Renaissance that celebrated Black novelist Nella Larsen captured in her seminal 1929 novel, Passing, marks British actress Rebecca Hall’s assured feature directorial début — a certain 2022 Oscar contender, having taken New York by storm last month at their annual New York Film Festival, and already up for a passel of Gotham Awards — will be available on the Netflix streaming service this coming Wednesday, November 10th. “We’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” muses Tessa Thompson’s melancholy character, Irene Redfield.

Ms. Hall’s choice of material for her début as writer-director is elevated by her evident personal investment in the story, having learned years ago that her American maternal grandfather was Black passing as white for most of his life. That intense personal connection pervades every lovingly composed shot of a work that takes a subtle, unwavering approach to the film’s subject matter, that resonates at a moment Black Lives Matter has exposed the simmering racial divides within society.

The story takes place in 1929, as Harlem resident Irene (Thompson) carefully navigates her way through a sweltering New York City summer day, tucking her face inside her hat so as to all the better, well, maybe not hide exactly, but at least obscure her face so that her black skin isn’t as evident to the privileged white locals surrounding her. Feeling self-conscious about being out of place, she’s shocked to run into Clare (Negga), a school friend with whom she had lost contact, now married to a wealthy (and avowedly racist) white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who has no idea that his wife is black. Clare “passes” for white, allowing her entree into an upper-crust American society that contemptuously shuns people of colour.

Inviting Irene up to her hotel room, upon returning to her home, there’s a marked visual switch from Clare and John’s suite, an airy space drenched in white light, to the more textured look inside the Harlem brownstone where Irene lives with her doctor husband Brian (André Holland) and their two boys. The action flashes forward to the autumn, when a letter from Clare, postmarked New York, indicates she has moved back to the city as she had hoped. Irene is hesitant to open it, but Brian is more curious, arching his eyebrows at Clare’s florid description of “this pale life of mine,” as she gently chides Renie for exposing her “wild desire” for another life.

Shot in luminous black-and-white by cinematographer Eduard Grau (a choice that, given the material, might sound gimmicky, and is not), Ms. Hall also opted for a boxed-in 4:3 aspect ratio, all the better to heighten the film’s constant tension and the sense that its piercingly sad characters can’t escape the confines of their lives.

From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention with its striking aesthetics. Most notably, as mentioned above, the desaturated black-and-white cinematography and 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls both vintage photography and classic cinema. The period-appropriate costumes and production design — stylishly rendered by the production designer Nora Mendism, and the costume designer Marci Rodgers — gives a strong sense of a time and place when flappers lived their best life. To add an elegant finishing touch, the intermittent piano refrain of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Homeless Wanderer, and the gorgeous score composed by Black composer Devonté Hynes, provides a further nostalgic nod to the Jazz Age.

Passing tingles through the vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Thompson and Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups. A tear rolling down a cheek. The slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man. A stolen glance of desire. Under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their obvious and barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.

And it’s through this discomfort that Passing transcends its mannered trappings to resonate with us as a poignant and powerful exploration of the human condition.

#VanPoli | An Apartment on Every Block | Mass, Arbitrary Rezoning

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2022, , , , , ,


The graphic above courtesy of retired Vancouver architect, Brian Palmquist. “All the blue and orange areas up for grabs” in a mass rezoning of 16 of 22 Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Has there ever been a Vancouver City Council more seemingly in the pocket of developers than our current Vancouver City Council?

Oh sure, our Mayor and Councillors do the right thing on occasion — as they did last week in referring the redevelopment of False Creek South to the city’s Planning Department — but, objectively and overall, the commitment to “growth” in our city continues unabated, as it did in the decade Vision Vancouver was in power at City Hall, and as continues on through until this day.

Densification of our city is an inevitability, as more and more people move to our little burgh by the sea. The question arises, though: in whose interests, and to whose benefit will this densification of our city take place?

Where is the clarion commitment to non-market co-operative and co-housing, and supportive social housing that will house the broad swath of Vancouver residents who earn the median income of $44,000 for single persons, and $65,000 for couples (figures provided by Statistics Canada), seniors on fixed incomes, single parents of little means, the creative community, and persons living at the shelter rate?

A corollary to those questions is the question posed by UBC professor Patrick Condon In his latest article in The Tyee …

“The presumption is that by increasing rental stock all along the shown routes rents will drop to affordable rates. But will they?”

Today, VanRamblings will present two informed perspectives on a document titled Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas , the massive 348-page report provided by city staff to Vancouver’s bealeaguered City Councillors for action.

Click on this link to listen to Patrick Condon’s interview on The Early Edition.

In his column in The Tyee, Dr. Condon writes …

“The importance of this motion cannot be overemphasized. In effect this proposed bylaw change, in combination with the Broadway plan, probably predetermines the density, tenure and affordability of most of the city. If this is true, what then is left for the city to decide in its ongoing $18 million city-wide plan, three years in the making?

Providing affordable housing is the existential need in our city. Our service workers, many of who are our sons and daughters, are being forced out of this city in droves. This Trojan Horse of a seemingly technical change will, if passed, benefit mainly the land speculator, whose pockets are already stuffed to overflowing.

Our housing crisis and accompanying urban land value inflation is far worse than experienced by either Cambridge or Berkeley. We should do no less than what they have enacted, and find a way to stream land value gains into affordable homes for those who need them.

The crux of the matter is this: the mass rezoning of Vancouver, if passed by Vancouver City Council, will “allow for six-storey mixed-use, unaffordable market rental buildings development” in residential neighbourhoods across the city.

Not to mention which, should Council approve the staff report, there would be NO community consultation and no option for residents to address Council on future rental projects approved by staff for construction in their neighbourhood.

In the report currently before Vancouver City Council, our elected representatives not only have to digest all 348 densely-packed pages of the report, and make some sense of the lengthy document and what it portends for the city going forward, but vote on the most significant change to zoning — a mass rezoning of 16 of our city’s 22 neighbourhoods, sans much in the way of any palpable, informed input from residents now, or more particularly, in the future — Vancouver has ever witnessed.

Take a look at the graphic above. The city’s Planning Department envisions, and recommends to the members of Vancouver City Council, the approval of three to six storey apartment-style buildings along arterials in 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — as well as, three and four storey townhouses and apartment buildings along residential streets one block away from the arterials.

All in the name of what? Greed? A “gentle densification” of our city that will make living in Vancouver more affordable for families — is that the goal of The Plan?

In his substack article titled Rental—Streamlining or Steamrolling? , architect Brian Palmquist writes …

More than a generation ago, anything more than single family homes in the RS districts of the city, which are much of this report’s focus, was forbidden. Basement suites were illegal and their closure was vigorously enforced by city staff — laneway houses as we now know them were nonexistent.

Fast forward to this report, where the same staff who impose burden after burden on even the simplest laneway rental home are proposing that RS homeowners solve the affordable housing shortage largely caused by staff’s work pace and fee demands, by accepting a massive up zoning affecting 16 of Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods — the other 6 are already subject to special, as-yet not revealed zoning such as the Broadway Plan and the Vancouver Plan.

Speakers presenting to Council may talk about various of the negative impacts of these proposals as they sit before you. As for me, I consider the proposal before you to be not so much streamlining as steamrolling.

VanRamblings presents the columns written by Patrick Condon and Brian Palmquist as edification on the Streamlining Rental Around Local Shopping Areas report before Vancouver City Council, and currently up for debate.

The key questions: Vancouver. A city for whom? Benefiting whose interests?

[Disclaimer. VanRamblings acknowledges that the members of Vancouver City Council are hard-working, dedicated public servants, who mean well for our city, and approach the very difficult work in which they engage each day with principle and integrity.  VanRamblings’ rhetoric is meant only as a ‘shot across the bow’, a reminder to our elected representatives that it is us who they were elected to represent, not the special interests who whisper, almost constantly, into their ears.]

COVID-19 | British Columbia Has Entered the Endemic Phase

BC Politics, COVID-19, Food & Health, Vancouver, , , , ,

Over the past weekend, VanRamblings had the opportunity to speak with a senior member of British Columbia’s public health pandemic response team, and the information with which we were provided was hopeful for B.C.’s near term future.

“British Columbia has entered the endemic phase of what we’ve all come to know as the pandemic this past 19 months, in fact, some while ago,” our unnamed source, unauthorized to speak on behalf of the office of British Columbia’s Public Health Office, told VanRamblings. “We’re not far off from removing mask mandates in those areas of the province where the full vaccination rate exceeds 90%, as is the case in Vancouver city proper, where the rate of fully vaccinated persons is currently 95% plus. Other regions of the province — Fraser Valley East, the Interior and Northern Health — have a ways to go before mask mandates, and other restrictions are removed by British Columbia’s public health office.”

VanRamblings asked the individual with whom we spoke about the current high COVID-19 infection rates we’re experiencing in British Columbia — most recently, the 3rd highest in Canada — and how this phenomenon might be accounted for …

“In British Columbia, we’re experiencing a series of super spreader events brought on by the unvaccinated members of regional communities, mostly situated in the three regions of the province where vaccination rates are low. Fully 98% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations and admissions to hospital ICU’s has occurred either within the unvaccinated community, or resultant from vulnerable vaccinated persons coming into contact with unvaccinated persons,” avers our public health source.

VanRamblings was told that in all likelihood British Columbians will be out of the worst of COVID-19 — even given the current and deadly virulence of the Delta variant — by early spring 2022, when life will return to some sense of “normal”, as we’ve all been observing now with capacity restrictions being lifted at Vancouver Canucks home games, within movie theatre complexes, and even at concerts.

When we asked our source about the 327 doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in British Columbia who have yet to get their first mRNA vaccine dose, our source simply rolled their eyes, muttering …

“As a health care professional, you are a scientist. Why you wouldn’t acknowledge the science on vaccines is beyond me? To say the least, that unfortunate development is disappointing, for those of us in the profession, and for all British Columbians.”

Or, as British Columbia Public Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry stated on Monday …

On balance, it is probable that the comfort level for most of us in the general public will not be alleviated until infection, hospitalization and ICU rates are observed as being significantly reduced, with COVID-19 death rates all but eliminated on most reporting days, and the rate of death from COVID-19 in B.C. minimal at worst.

#VanPoli | False Creek South | The Heart of Our City Preserved

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REJECTED | City of Vancouver Real Estate Department Plan for False Creek South

In early October, when the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department presented a sordid, mercenary plan for the redevelopment of False Creek South —  that parcel of land on the south side of False Creek stretching from the Cambie Street bridge to the Granville Street bridge — Mayor Kennedy Stewart the very next day came out in full-throated support of The Plan, writing in an overly solicitous column published in The Straight that averred …

“Great cities like ours can never stand still. We must always examine whether our city is meeting our needs, both for today and tomorrow.”

The Real Estate Department’s Plan called for a greedy financial return to the City, that sought to more than triple the existing density of homes in the False Creek South neighbourhood, from 2450 units to a reconfigured 6600 units.

The real cost of the Plan?

The absolute, utter destruction of the False Creek South neighbourhood, a decimation of the heart and demographic integrity of one of Vancouver’s most sustainable and livable districts — the ‘close-fisted’ Plan laying waste to existing housing co-operatives dotted throughout the neighbourhood, moving residents from their current locations to a ghettoized, ‘poor door’ stretch of land situated along the bustling, carbon emitting 6th Avenue traffic corridor.

Community outrage soon ensued.

As founding chair of the UBC urban design programme, Patrick Condon, wrote in an article in The Tyee , the City’s Real Estate Department’s Plan would …

  • Increase market condos nearly fourfold, from 688 to 2,350 units;
  • Increase by more than 13x market rental units, from 150 to 2020 units;
  • See all new buildings constructed at least six storeys tall, ranging up to 50 storeys tall at the Granville Street bridgehead. Today, most buildings on the district’s city-owned land are three to four storeys in height;
  • Shift the tenure mix on city-owned land from the current 36% market strata, 8% market rental & 56% non-market co-op / affordable rental units, to 35% market strata, 30% market rental, and 34% non-market co-op and affordable rental;
  • Eventually demolish most of the existing co-ops, with these sites reused for market rentals and market condos, or to expand Charleson Park.

As Robert Renger, a retired senior planner who worked with the City of Burnaby, wrote in a response article in The Straight to the column written by Mayor Stewart — as well as to supporters of the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department’s Plan for False Creek South, which accused False Creek South residents of both nimbyism and elitism …

  • 15% of FCS residents are children, with 11% freehold and 16% citywide;
  • 17.5% of False Creek South family households are single-parent, compared to 10.9% of False Creek South freehold and 15.9% citywide;
  • The income mix on FCS lands closely parallels that of the city as a whole.
  • The residents of False Creek South had long ago published a document they called RePlan , a thorough and critical vetting of the City’s proposed Plan for the False Creek South neighbourhood, writing that …

    “False Creek South offers a housing model that is affordable, resilient and community-focused, with a variety of affordable, mixed-income housing options that span a spectrum of housing tenures. We are calling on Vancouver City Council to protect the existing variety of affordable, mixed-income housing options in False Creek South, to eliminate the threat of housing insecurity on leased City land, to kick start community growth, and to create right-sized housing in the False Creek South neighbourhood.

    Let’s expand affordable, resilient, mixed-income, mixed-tenure housing communities. Vancouver needs to protect and create more housing that is community centred, diverse, equitable, inclusive and secure that spans all leasehold housing tenures, including permanent housing for people who have experienced or are at risk of homelessness.”

    On October 5th in a motion presented to her colleagues on Vancouver City Council, Councillor Colleen Hardwick did just that in calling for security of tenure for the beleaguered residents of False Creek South, whose ongoing residency in the neighbourhood would be jeopardized by the redevelopment Plan published by the City’s Real Estate Department. Before that motion could be discussed around the Council table, the members of Council sought to hear feedback from the residents of False Creek South, as well as citizens from right across the city.

    Councillor Colleen Hardwick + retired CoV planner / RePlan co-author , Nathan Edelson

    Long story short, after hearing from some 171 residents of the City of Vancouver — many of them children, now adults, who had grown up in the False Creek South neighbourhood — in, perhaps, the most moving series of addresses this or any other Council has ever heard, in an amendment motion presented by Councillor Christine Boyle, all 10 Vancouver City Councillors, with an about face by Mayor Kennedy Stewart, unanimously rejected the City Real Estate Department’s Plan for False Creek South, instead opting to turn the process of the redevelopment of False Creek South to the City’s Planning Department, which planning process will include respectful and extensive consultation not only with False Creek South residents, but engaged residents across the city at-large.