Category Archives: BC Politics

#VanElxn2022 | One Month Until Voting Day | The Election is Over

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One month from today, voters go to the polls to elect a new civic administration in the City of Vancouver. Honestly, they oughta stay home.

Billionaire developers and wealthy millionaires have bought the 2022 Vancouver civic election, negating democracy, and the will of Vancouver’s citizens.

Bear with us while, as per usual, VanRamblings buries the lede.

This morning the Non-Partisan Association’s Mayoral candidate Fred Harding, incumbent NPA Councillor Melissa De Genova, and veteran Vision Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong —  along with twelve other 2022 Vancouver civic election candidates —  find themselves in Supreme Court responding to Vancouver Chief Election Officer Rosemary Hagiwaraha’s Court challenge seeking to declare that fifteen Vancouver candidates for office are not entitled to have their names on the ballot papers using Chinese, Persian or other non-Latin characters.

The 15 are Fred Harding, Elaine Allan, Honieh Barzegari, Cinnamon Bhayani, Iona Bonamis, Ken Charko, Melissa De Genova, Morning Lee, Tesicca Truong, Arezo Zarrabian, Rahul Aggarwal, Milan Kljajic, Suzie Mah, Allan Wong, and Dave Pasin.

Seven term Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong sought re-election in 2014 and 2018 without Chinese characters, but included Chinese characters in his September 7th nomination documents. Vision Vancouver council candidate Honieh Barzegari used a Farsi font on her form, while Forward Together council candidate Tesicca Truong expressed a desire to use both Chinese and Vietnamese beside her name on the ballot.

Ms. Mah, a COPE candidate running for School Board, submitted her nomination with her English name and her Chinese name, telling the Vancouver Sun’s Cheryl Chan that the Chief Election Officer’s court challenge “sends a disturbing message that only anglicized names are allowed on ballots.”

“I’m known by my Chinese name by my family, and any time I talk to the Asian press, and they want to translate my name into Chinese. I wouldn’t want to just have my English name in print,” said Mah, who added that there needs to be a clearer definition of “usual name” established.

The two Vision candidates said they were dismayed to learn their usual names are at risk of being removed from the ballot, while the NPA candidates accused Ms. Hagiwaraha’s application as tantamount to cultural appropriation.

The Court is expected to rule on the matter before the end of the week.

Meanwhile Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his Forward Together civic party seem to be in a bit of trouble, following on the retrieval of a two-page spreadsheet printout of a list of Forward Together donors and donations.

The editor of The George Straight, Charlie Smith, calls Mr. Woodvine’s retrieval of the Forward Together donors list an astonishing find, given that the document includes a list of “captains” in what appears to be a fundraising document. Beside each name are the 2022 donations, followed by the goal.

Mr. Smith writes that the “captains” represent a surfeit of influential, well-heeled and wealthy Vancouver developers and real-estate executives, such as:

  • Arnold Silber, president, Value Property Group ($4,000 donations, $25,000 goal);
  • Terry Hui, CEO, Concord Pacific, the real estate development company that oversees the development of the Expo lands ($8,200 donations, $31,250 goal);
  • Daisen Gee-Wing, senior vice president, Canadian Metropolitan Properties ($1,200 donations, $12,500 goal);
  • Jim Szabo, vice chairman capital markets, CBRE ($1,250 donations, $12,500 goal);
  • Joe Carreira, vice president development, Conwest Group of Companies ($1,765 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Jon Stovell, president and CEO, Reliance Properties Ltd. ($2,500 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Bob Rennie, founder, Rennie Marketing Systems ($12,500 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Francesco Aquilini, partner, Aquilini Investment Group, and owner of the Vancouver Canucks ($64,300 donations, goal $110,000);
  • Raymond Louie, chief operating officer, Coromandel Properties Ltd. ($2,500 donations, goal $25,000);
  • Stepan Vdovine, director, business development and corporate affairs, Amacon ($12,424 donations, goal $18,750);
  • Ian Gillespie, founder of Westbank Projects Corp. ($2,400 donations, goal $25,000);

… among a massive group of other monied Vancouver developers who appear set to donate to Forward Together;s campaign to the tune of millions of dollars.

As Mr. Smith wrote in The Straight at 2:41 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon …

Stewart’s party has not explicitly admitted that this spreadsheet was created by someone with Forward Together. But there is certainly circumstantial evidence. The name “Neil” shows up, as do the initials “NM”. Stewart’s chief of staff is Neil Monckton. There are also some names on the list with past associations with the NDP, which is a party that Stewart has represented in the past and which Monckton has worked very hard to elect. They include former B.C. NDP presidents Moe Sihota and Craig Keating.

Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Brahman writes that Neil Monckton, who is Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Chief of Staff, collects an annual $126,366 salary. Mr. Monckton has been on unpaid leave from the position since September 10th.

VanRamblings is struck by the notion that, although under provincial election legislation brought in by former Attorney General David Eby in 2018 to limit political party donations to $1250 per individual, Stepan Vdovine — Executive Director of Vision Vancouver until the party’s defeat in 2018 — has donated $12,424, just shy of ten times the allowed amount, while real estate marketer extraordinaire Bob Rennie donated $12,500, exactly 10x the allowed amount.

British Columbia’s next Premier, David Eby, weighed in on the controversy …

“Fundraising will always be part of politics, but some people are clearly frustrated that the rich are no longer able to buy convenient access to politicians with private $10,000-a-plate dinners or six-figure donations. We’re not going back to the bad old days,” Eby told the Vancouver Sun’s Dan Fumano. “If I am elected leader, our government will continue to monitor and improve our campaign financing laws where necessary to ensure that all people, not just the rich, get their voices heard during and after elections.”

One imagines the matter of developer donors exceeding the allowed election donation amounts has likely been referred to Elections B.C. for investigation, as requested by rival Vancouver civic party TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver.

“Vancouver voters need to know the truth about this alleged fundraising list before they cast their ballots — it’s critical that Elections BC find out what has actually happened and clear the air,” TEAM for a Livable Vancouver campaign manager and Council candidate Bill Tieleman, told The Straight.

VanRamblings learned yesterday that a high profile Council candidate in the current Vancouver civic election called the employer of a person working on a rival party’s campaign, insisting to this person’s employer that she must be fired from her well-paid job immediately, for “interfering in the election campaign,” the victim of this despicable actl distraught, arising from the actions of a contemptible candidate for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

As VanRamblings has been writing for some weeks now, ABC (A Better City) has set its sights on purchasing the current civic election outright, having already spent millions of dollars, and ready to spend millions more — orders of magnitude larger than any other Vancouver civic campaign for office in 2022, at least four times Forward Together’s campaign budget, and as much as one hundred times the campaign budgets of rival parties, including the Green Party of Vancouver, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, Progress Vancouver, OneCity Vancouver, COPE Vancouver and Vote Socialist.

As we wrote above, the provincial NDP government brought in municipal election finance reform legislation in 2018, with strict campaign spending limits. As Dan Fumano reported in The Vancouver Sun on August 3rd, billionaire Lululemon founder Chip Wilson found a “work around” that would allow him to create a U.S.-style political action committees that — as the Witchita, Kansas-based billionaire Koch brothers have done for years, in the United States — would allow him, and other like-minded millionaires and billionaires, to funnel monies and finance “pro-business” politicians and political parties, all without breaching the tenets of British Columbia’s election finance reform legislation.

In 2021, Chip Wilson founded the Pacific Prosperity Network — a non-profit NGO — to work behind-the-scenes to finance right-leaning, free-enterprise municipal and provincial candidates, and “help” them get elected, to form government. In July of this year, Chip Wilson wrote a letter urging other wealthy people to contribute $50,000 to $200,000 each to PPN, saying he’d donated $380,000 to the cause (recently reported as a donation to ABC).

In Vancouver’s 2018 civic election, Mr. Wilson was a high-profile supporter of NPA Mayoral candidate Ken Sim. After narrowly losing to Mr. Stewart four years ago, Ken Sim is running again this year with the upstart ABC (A Better City). In an interview with ABC campaign manager Kareem Allam, Mr. Fumano was told …

“We appreciate Chip’s success as a businessman, but when it comes to politics, we’re not values-aligned. And he has no involvement on our campaign, other than those donations made a year ago.”

Yeah, sure, right. A $388,000 donation by Mr. Wilson to ABC (A Better City) — and, in Ken Sim, the party’s seemingly pliable and “co-operative” candidate for Mayor — is just peanuts,  and as Mr. Allam states above, Chip Wilson’s “values” are not aligned with ABC (A Better City), clearly the civic party of Wilson’s choice, with the preferred Mayoral candidate running for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

Here’s the rub: ABC (A Better City) and ABC alone possesses the civic election budget that has allowed ABC to buy saturation radio and TV advertising deriding Mayor Stewart for his alleged — and as as VanRamblings wrote Tuesday, untrue — intention to legislate mobility pricing in Vancouver, that would charge citizens $15 to $65 dollars for vehicular travel within the city, when mobility pricing is a regional issue years away from implementation, if ever.

VanRamblings was apprised Wednesday, Ken Sim and ABC (A Better City) are polling in the low-to-mid 30s range, with Mayor Stewart’s flailing and failing Forward Together campaign mired at 25% and falling, with Colleen Hardwick’s TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver way back at 16%, with Fred Harding’s NPA at 8% and Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver campaign barely registering at 6%, leaving the Greens, OneCity Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, COPE, and Vote Socialist to divide up the remaining twelve to sixteen per cent of the vote.

Internal ABC polling — reports are that ABC’s polling firm is making contact with up to 2,000 probable Vancouver voters daily — give every indication of an ABC (A Better City) sweep at the polls on Election Night, October 15th, an inevitability, when the nascent civic party will elect Ken Sim as Vancouver’s next Mayor, and all seven ABC (A Better City)  City Council candidates for office.

The only question remaining open, then, is which two current candidates for office will form the official opposition on Vancouver City Council: the Greens’ Adriane Carr & Pete Fry; TEAM’s Bill Tieleman & Sean Nardi; Vote Socialist’s Sean Orr & COPE’s Breen Ouelette; Vision Vancouver’s take no guff Lesli Boldt, and Forward Together’s Dulcy Anderson; the NPA’s Melissa De Genova & Arezo Zarrabian; or, maybe, Progress Vancouver’s Morgane Oger will fill one of the two open slots on the next “give it all away to developers” City Council.

VanElxn2022 | An Ugly and Disputatious Vancouver Municipal Election In 2022

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In 2014, Vision Vancouver’s Queen of Mean, the party’s longtime Director of Communications, Marcella Munro, ran a 24-hour-a-day backroom operation for the governing party, staffed by 20 writers who’d been hired to respond to any online provocation that might be seen by some to bring Vision Vancouver into disrepute.

For the most part, the operation was harmless: if some average citizen made a comment on an online story in The Georgia Straight, The Vancouver Sun or The Province newspapers — or any other online publication that covered civic affairs, including social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — members of the cult-like Vision Defense Team were at the ready with a pithy and well-written response to the miscreant commenter who had dared — heaven forbid! — to call into question the innate integrity and goodness of  Vision Vancouver.

That was then. This is now. Over the past eight years, political dirty tricks, such as the relatively harmless work of the Vision Defense Team, has evolved.

It would seem that the Greg Andrews aka @gregeh on Twitter — a vicious YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) provocateur — who attacked TEAM’s quite wonderful Linsea O’Shea (the absolute find of the 2022 Vancouver civic election campaign) is not only a disreputable, violence prone misogynist (aren’t they all?), but an avowed racist and serial abuser who counsels women to take their lives (isn’t that a crime?)

You see, these YIMBY folks — who would very much seem to be in the employ of Vancouver’s development industry — in pushing for more unaffordable condos to be built everywhere across the city, and who — unlike Marcella Munro and her otherwise well-intentioned Vision Defense Team — are prepared to go to any lengths, involve themselves in any sort of untoward conduct that would, at least on the surface, seem to serve the declared interests of their well-heeled developer masters.

VanRamblings would like to present Mr. Andrews’ original tweets but, alas, he’s blocked us, so you’ll just have to make do with the following screen captures …

Also, note this: Greg Andrews has argued for gassing his opponents …

Despite Andrews’ history of racism, misogyny and violence, a number of local YIMBY politicians and activists follow him on social media.

According to a June 17, 2021 story in the online indie journal, ThinkPol …

This is not the first time Vancouver’s YIMBY movement has faced allegations of racism. During the 2018 municipal elections, a YIMBY blogger asked voters to reject a South Asian candidate because “you can take a slave out of the jungle but you can’t take the jungle out of a savage.”

A surfeit of directors of Vancouver’s prominent YIMBY organization, Abundant Housing Vancouver, shared the blog post, later claiming that publication of the blog post was a conspiracy by the group’s opponents to make the group look bad.

In 2020, YIMBY blogger, Smart Living VanCity, came out as an alt-right white supremacist. A number of YIMBY advocates, including Greg Andrews, have since turned their Twitter timelines private, as @MonitorYvr continues to tweet out.

All of the above is to record the toxic level of discourse among opposing sides in the debate as to whether steel-and-concrete, beads on a string, greenhouse gas emitting podium and plynth style 40, 50, 60 and 70 storey towers is the development model Vancouver should adopt going forward — as is the case with the Forward Together, Vision / OneCity and Progress Vancouver civic parties — or, as is the case with TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, a democratic and community engaged, neighbourhood-and-citizen respecting gentle density approach to building housing to resolve Vancouver’s omnipresent housing crisis is the preferred approach.

Meanwhile, in other not-so-good news of the day, the September 19th Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods Mayoral debate that was to take place at the Britannia Community Centre and be moderated by Business in Vancouver publisher and editor-in-chief, Kirk LaPointe, was cancelled yesterday, after a representative for ABC Mayoral candidate Ken Sim wrote to the Coalition stating that Mr. Sim would not be made available to attend the single most important Mayoral debate of the 2022 election season, while Vancouver’s feckless and invisible Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his Forward Together Vancouver civic party failed to respond at all.

In other distressing campaign news, the Non Partisan Association (NPA) is accusing ABC President Peter Armstrong of hiring an individual to work on the NPA campaign, with the sole purpose of retrieving data from the NPA for ABC (A Better City?) to use in their campaign — for many years, Mr. Armstrong was the President of the NPA, only to have the party stolen from him while vacationing on his yacht, and visiting his very good friend, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson’s Italian villa.

As for more dirty tricks from the ABC campaign for office, there’s this …

Then there’s this tweet by Peter Meiszner, an ABC candidate for Council.

And how about Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle’s “head over heels in love with her” (wait til he wakes up one day) husband Seth Klein going after TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Colleen Hardwick.

VanRamblings will leave the campaigns for office with this peace of advice …

#VanElxn2022 | A Quick, Neighbourly Précis of Vancouver’s Civic Election

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Over the weekend, at the request of a neighbour — who was out doing some gardening at the front of our home —  VanRamblings engaged in a conversation about the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, who the Mayoral candidates are, and what the various municipal parties offering candidates for office aspire to as they seek to take residence at Vancouver City Hall post election day, Saturday, October 15th.

VanRamblings apprised our cherished, hard working neighbour, as follows …

Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and his Forward Together municipal party. Now, here’s a Mayor who spent more time this past term in office meeting with and acquiescing to real estate developers in our town than he did working on behalf of those who (barely) elected him to office in 2018. What does Forward Together stand for? Build, build and build more 40 storey towers everywhere, on every block, more towers than you can imagine, almost all of which will be sold offshore, as speculative ventures rather than homes, and which units in these towers will remain unoccupied long, long into the future. Mayor Kennedy = the politics of greed run rampant, a Mayor absolutely not on your side.

“Hmmm,” my neighbour said, “that doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it doesn’t,” VanRamblings responded. “But there’s worse than Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and his Forward Together party — who are now running 6 candidates for Council! With provincial election legislation kicking in Thursday, September 15th restricting campaign spending, in the last 10 days in adding Alvin Singh, Tessica Truong and the Mayor’s wife, Jeanette Ashe, to Forward Together’s campaign slate, each new candidate allows the expenditure of an additional $220,000 apiece in overall campaign spending = $1.32 million for ads, social media, billboards and radio and TV advertising in the four week lead-up to election day.”

“One more point: the OneCity Vancouver and Vision Vancouver civic parties are brothers and sisters in arms of Forward Together, in this election. A vote for candidates running with any of these three civic political parties is a vote for another term of a feckless Kennedy Stewart as Vancouver’s Mayor.”

“Now, where was I? Oh yes. There’s worse than Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Forward Together in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.”

ABC (A Better City). In a greater rush to destroy our city than any other municipal party with candidates running for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election —  with paper candidate / unprincipled ABC front man / dumb as a door knob (about civic politics) Ken Sim, as ABC’s Mayoral candidate —  the powers behind ABC (that would be multi-millionaire Rocky Mountaineer owner / businessman Peter Armstrong,  and multi-billionaire Lululemon founder Chip Wilson) — won’t be giving the city away to developers, as say, Forward Together intends. Nope. ABC will be the developer, both Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Wilson fancying themselves as future billionaire Vancouver real estate developers, who intend to rescind the Empty Homes Tax, should they gain a majority on Council, and demand the provincial government —  be it an NDP, or a provincial Liberal government over in Victoria —  rescind their Empty Homes Tax, prepared to call out the duly elected MLAs and Cabinet members as “racists” for not allowing a multi-billion dollar influx of foreign capital to pour into the construction of more towers than you could possibly imagine —  can you say the word expropriation? We knew you could —  displacing Vancouver residents all in the name of greed.

A vote for ABC (A Better City?) Mayoral candidate Ken Sim would mean that you hate yourself, you hate your children and grandchildren, you hate your family, your neighbours and your colleagues, their children and their children’s children, and that you not only don’t care about our city, you actually hate our city. A vote for ABC = a death wish for what we’ve known and come to love as … Vancouver.

“Surely, there’s got to be someone out there with their head screwed on straight,” averred our neighbour. “Someone who has the best interests of the city at heart, for you, for me, for our families. Tell me that’s so, Raymond.”

L-R Stephen Roberts, Grace Quan, Param Nijjar, Colleen Hardwick, Bill Tieleman, Cleta Brown, Sean Nardi

TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver. Although not perfect —  VanRamblings wants to see meat-on-the-bone policies —  in 2022, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver is the only game in town, the only Vancouver civic party for which you can cast your ballot in good conscience. Not only is TEAM Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick the single most caring, educated and principled candidate among the five Mayoral candidates seeking office in Vancouver in 2022, she’s … now steady yourself … a democrat. Yes, that’s right: unlike every other candidate running for office with all the other Vancouver civic parties in 2022, Councillor Colleen Hardwick, and her six TEAM candidates for Vancouver City Council, would pause the completely unnecessary paean to real estate developers —  the Broadway Plan and the Vancouver Plan —  with a TEAM civic administration plan that would commence a multi-neighbourhood re-drafting of community plans for Vancouver’s 23 diverse neighbourhoods that would ensure densification in each neighbourhood, as necessary, while incorporating schools, parks, small business, green space and plazas, recreation centres and other community amenities into those community plans.


Arbutus Walk, a human-scale, gentle density Kitsilano development at 12th and Arbutus

If you care about the city of Vancouver at all, if you love your children, and hold your family, your neighbours and your colleagues in high regard, and want the best for them, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, and TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver alone has the Mayoral candidate, in Colleen Hardwick, and the Council candidate slate for which you can, in good conscience, cast your ballot at the advance polls early next month, or on the autumn election day of Saturday, October 15th.

Only TEAM for a Livable Vancouver will work to preserve neighbourhood integrity.

Above: graphic representations of the Broadway Plan, passed by Vancouver City Council

Now for the also-ran Vancouver Mayoral candidates I told my neighbour about.

Mark Marissen and Progress Vancouver. Running a pretty much carbon copy Forward Together / Vision Vancouver / OneCity Vancouver campaign for office, as much as VanRamblings likes Mark Marissen, and at least one of his Council candidates running for office, Mark Marissen has as much chance of becoming Vancouver’s next Mayor as you, your post person, or VanRamblings does. A knowledgeable and respected politico with a good heart, Mark Marissen has mounted a virtually invisible campaign for the Mayor’s office. In 2018, the Vancouver civic party he created, Yes Vancouver, secured 9,924 votes and 5.73%  of the vote —  which we’re pretty much expecting will be the case in 2022, as well.

Fred Harding, and the Non-Partisan Association. Fred Harding, who operates a business out of Mainland China, and whose wife wife Zhang Mi is a popular, well-known singer across Asia, was parachuted into the position of the NPA’s 2022 Mayoral candidate — after both Colleen Hardwick and Mark Marissen refused the NPA’s entreaties, following NPA Mayoral candidate John Coupar’s unseemly ejection as the NPA’s Mayoral candidate. A personable fellow, who presents well, given the trials and tribulations of the Non-Partisan Association campaign for office in 2022 —  hardly aided by the American-style dirty tricks campaign Peter Armstrong and ABC are running against the NPA, whose voters list Peter Armstrong stole before setting about to form ABC as his “new” Vancouver civic party — the NPA would seem to in deep trouble in 2022, and may be hard-pressed to elect anyone to office.

VanElxn2022 | The Green Party of Vancouver | Seek A Renewed Mandate

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Truth to tell, VanRamblings has some affection for all the folks involved in the Green Party of Vancouver. Deep in our heart we believe that — although we may differ on policy orientation, from time to time — that the Vancouver Greens seeking re-election to Vancouver City Council come the evening of E-Day, Saturday, October 15th — that would be incumbents Pete Fry, Michael Wiebe and Adriane Carr — along with Green Party of Vancouver candidates, Stephanie Smith and Devyani Singh … both of whom we know, like and admire … have the best interests of the citizenry of Vancouver at heart, and as a group are well-meaning and informed folks of conscience who day-in and day-out make decisions — with humility and heart — employing their best judgement on matters placed before them.

On July 9th, at Khatsalano Days in the Kitsilano Vancouver neighbourhood, VanRamblings happened across Vancouver City Councillor Michael Wiebe, who was standing in front of the Green Party of Vancouver booth. Spotting us, smiling that big goofy and welcoming smile of his, he waved us over to speak with him.

Now for a little context: last autumn, VanRamblings wrote that Mr. Wiebe and his Green Party colleague, Pete Fry, constituted two members of the Three Misogynist Musketeers brigade on City Council (Mayor Kennedy Stewart was the third party in the unkind trio), arising from their untoward treatment of their fellow Councillor, Colleen Hardwick, during the course, and outside, of Council meetings.

As well, when respected municipal affairs lawyer Ray Young published a report in September 2020 recommending that Mr. Wiebe resign his seat on Council, arising from a perceived conflict of interest — a report filed at the request of then City Manager, Sadhu Johnston — VanRamblings wrote three withering columns demanding Mr. Wiebe’s immediate resignation of his seat on Council.

With the above in mind, VanRamblings (gingerly) approached Mr. Wiebe. Towering over us (VanRamblings is height-challenged), Mr. Wiebe gave us a fist bump, and told us how glad he was to see us, after which we engaged in — by far — the best, the most expansive, the most detailed, the most informed, and the most humane conversation on Vancouver civic politics we have had with anyone involved in #vanpoli, at any point over the past four years.

Colour us mightily impressed.

Mature of demeanour, Mr. Wiebe — who we’ve known well since his election as a Park Board Commissioner, in 2014 — quietly let us know that these past four years have proved a mighty learning experience for the novice Vancouver City Councillor, which newfound knowledge, over the course of the past 24 months, has translated into a much more settled and thoughtful approach to governance, than previously.

Suffice to say, VanRamblings came away from that day’s discussion with Michael Wiebe with a respect and admiration for him, such that we are giving serious consideration to endorsing his candidacy for re-election to Vancouver City Council.

In June, while attending VanRamblings’ good friend (and long, our blog’s much-beloved webmaster) Mike Klassen’s 60th birthday party (Mike is currently an ABC candidate for Vancouver City Council) at the Polish Hall on Fraser Street, we were surprised to see respected and hard-working Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry in attendance. Seems that Mr. Fry & Mr. Klassen have known one another dating back to their days writing for and working on Reverend Moonbeam’s (Darren Atwater’s) much-beloved Terminal City newspaper.

In the 90s, Pete — on this day, with a smile as big as all outdoors crossing his face, his eyes sparkling like the commencement of new day at sunrise, full of promise and intent for good —  was, he informed us, the Digiboy of fame and (not quite so much) fortune at Terminal City, and Mike Klassen long a much cherished colleague.

As we expected may have proved to be the case with Mr. Wiebe, there was the possibility, and perhaps not so remote a possibility, that upon spotting us in the Polish Hall, the affable and good-natured (not to mention, incredibly bright and principled) Mr. Fry might have wanted to punch our lights out, given the untoward provocations that he, from time to time, felt had been visited upon him by VanRamblings. Well, here we are today, in one piece, with no bloody nose.

Unpretentious, possessed of good humour, welcoming, friendly, gregarious of nature, articulate (no wonder the media in this town love him), humane and humble, possessed of an uncommon equanimity of presentation and spirit, VanRamblings has long liked, respected and admired Pete Fry — and although Mr. Fry is no particular fan of VanRamblings, either the person or the blog — our affection and respect for Pete Fry has not diminished one iota in all the years we’ve known him. VanRamblings liked Pete in the past & like and admire him through until this day.

As such, as with Mr. Wiebe, VanRamblings would consider endorsing Pete Fry’s re-election to Vancouver City Council, as a thoughtful and considerate candidate possessed of much integrity, who means well for the citizens of Vancouver, always.


The 2022 Green Party of Vancouver campaign launch. Candidate speeches begin at 2:45.

Writing the above about Mr. Wiebe and Mr. Fry, we recognize that it is imcumbent on VanRamblings to set about to formally interview the two Green Party City Councillors — as we arranged last evening at the 2022 Green Party of Vancouver campaign launch — in order to give them voice, to provide each candidate for re-election a forum to have recorded why it is these outstanding Vancouver City Councillors feel they are deserving of your vote, and another term on Council (and, let’s face it, each of these fine candidates very much are worthy of your vote), and what it is they would see themselves accomplishing on a second term on Council.