Category Archives: Environment

#VanPoli Civic Politics | The Death of Cynicism | Part 1 of 4

May 6, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Environment, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Vancouver City Council, 2018 - 2022 | Sarah Kirby-Yung, Christine Boyle, Pete Fry Vancouver City Council, to serve from 2018 thru October 2022, clockwise: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Adriane Carr, Melissa De Genova, Lisa Dominato, Michael Wiebe, Jean Swanson, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Colleen Hardwick, and Pete Fry.

The time has arrived once again for VanRamblings to weigh in on the state and nature of civic politics, as practiced in the City of Vancouver.
Today’s post will begin a brief insight into the 10 City Councillors who were elected this past October, and how each is faring in the current term.

As per the graphic above, Councillor Rebecca Bligh is Vancouver City Council’s delegate to, and a Board member of, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, replacing retired City Councillor Raymond Louie in that role.
The socially-skilled Ms. Bligh has emerged, as might well be expected given her background in business, as one of the more conservative voices on Council — although, as is the case with her Non-Partisan Association colleagues, a fiscal conservative and certainly not a social conservative.
Working with her fellow elected, progressive and feminist NPA City Councillors, Council Finance Chair Melissa De Genova, Lisa Dominato, Colleen Hardwick and Sarah Kirby-Yung, Ms. Bligh’s focus has tended towards looking after the public purse, keeping taxes low and, most recently, championing the shifting of the tax burden away from small business owners — who you may have noticed have been going out of business in record numbers these past months, with vacancy signs on arterials throughout the city — to homeowners — receiving support for this important initiative from councillors Sarah Kirby-Young, Lisa Dominato, Michael Wiebe, Adriane Carr and Pete Fry. Note should be made that small business bears up to 49% of the tax burden in the City of Vancouver.
Note should also be made that the passage of the tax shift motion represented the first time this current term Councillors voted contrary to staff wishes, who unsurprisingly emerged as the only voices in opposition to the tax shift — for a Council that has tended to be in sway to City staff, Councillors’ decision to act in the public interest rather than bureaucratic staff interest, represents hope on the horizon that Council, in future, may more consistently vote for us, rather than adhere to bureaucratic wishes.

Councillor Christine Boyle (pictured above) has emerged as Vancouver City Council and our city’s leading climate change warrior, this past January introducing a ground-breaking, precedent-setting motion that in the process of declaring a climate emergency, mandated Six Big Moves …

1. That 90% of Vancouver citizens will eventually live within an easy walk or stroll of their daily needs. That implies much more densification in South Vancouver, where this is mostly not the case — apart from in Marpole, Oakridge, Dunbar, Kerrisdale, and South Hill;

2. Council will set a target of 50% of kilometres driven in 2030 will be made in zero-emission vehicles. This implies a sharp increase in electric-vehicle charging stations and far more extensive efforts to make these available to tenants, who comprise 53 percent of the city’s population;

3. By 2030, two-thirds of trips will be by walking, cycling, rollerblading, and transit. This implies that more road space for motor vehicles will be taken away to accommodate non-motorists. This process has already begun on the Granville Street bridge;

4. That all new replacement heating and hot water systems will deliver zero emissions, which implies a sharp expansion of neighbourhood energy utilities and the use of heat pumps;

5. Setting a target of reducing embedded emissions in new buildings and construction projects to 40% of 2018 levels by 2030, which as Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith writes, “would inevitably lead to far more wood construction and far less use of cement, as well as fewer underground parkades”;

6. Passing policies that will remove one million tonnes of carbon annually by 2060 through regeneration of local forests and coastal ecosystems, which as Mr. Smith writes, “… implies a whole lot of tree planting.”

This past week Council unanimously approved the climate action initiative.
As VanRamblings has long contended, 34-year-old Councillor Christine Boyle represents the hope of our future, a visionary leader made for our times, a humble political figure who surveys a broad cross-section of public opinion (listening, really listening) before acting, a Tommy Douglas-like figure (although, she’s not there yet — but she will be!) who inspires, has consistently proven she can work productively with others, and whose clarion voice — as is the case with many of her Council colleagues — is undeniable, honest and true & in Ms. Boyle’s case, authentically her own.

Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr celebrating Pride Day in our city, in 2018.

After serving two terms in office leading the charge at City Council on behalf of citizen interests, three-term Councillor Adriane Carr has taken somewhat of a back seat to her more vocal, recently-elected, activist, and ambitious colleagues on Council: think Councillors Christine Boyle, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Ms. Carr’s Green colleague, Pete Fry, in particular — all of whom have proved, as well might be expected to anyone in the know, as the most media savvy of our Vancouver councillors, consistently articulate, the most progressive and forward thinking, plain spoken and engaged councillors, and absolutely tireless in their service of the public interest, out and about our city engaging with the broadest range of citizens in every neighbourhood across our city every opportunity they get … and who, for the record, constitute VanRamblings’ favourite councillors.
Still and all, we’re talking Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr here — two elections in a row emerging as Vancouver’s most beloved City Councillor, reflected in poll topping numbers on election day in both 2014 and 2018 — no piker she. As the Chairperson of Vancouver City Council’s Standing Committee on Policy and Strategic Priorities (Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung is vice-chair), chairperson of the Metro Vancouver Board Climate Action Committee, and since 2009 the co-chair of the Canadian Women Voters’ Congress non-partisan Women’s Campaign School, Ms. Carr has long worked on behalf of citizens, as she continues to do to this day.
Councillor Carr has argued articulately and well in the current term for awarding extra density to developers in exchange for renting 20% of the suites in new construction at CMHC (and Council’s) “moderate rental” / median market rental rents, rents well below market, the best example of which is the proposed Kitsilano development at 2nd and Larch.
Let us all hope that Councillor Carr carries the day on this important initiative, a constituent element of a broader affordable housing strategy.
At present, under the existing Vision Vancouver-initiated Rental 100 programme, in exchange for extra density, developers offer rents only slightly below market rates (e.g. $1,768 for a studio, $2,056 for one bedroom, $2,703 for two bedrooms, and $3,559 for three bedrooms), as opposed to $950 for a studio unit; $1,200, one bedroom; $1,600, two bedrooms; and $2,000, three bedrooms (with lower “moderate rents” on Vancouver’s eastside), as the “moderate rental rates” proposed by Councillor Adriane Carr, for those earning between $30,000 and $80,000.
In case you were wondering: yes, Adriane Carr remains very much on our side, as we presume will continue to be the case throughout the term.

For anyone paying attention to the goings-on at Vancouver City Hall this past six months, you have to know that our new Council is the most action-oriented, public interest serving, neighbourhood-consulting and activist City Council Vancouver voters have elected to municipal office in years.
Although, the new Council members sometimes lose the thread of the argument that got them elected (which we’ll write about on Thursday), most Councillors consistently finding themselves in these early days of their four-year term too often in the sway of bureaucratic staff. In consequence, even given their activist bent, our new Council has emerged as quiescent.
VanRamblings believes that our current very bright and dedicated group of Councillors by this autumn will finally have begun to find their feet (and independent activist, community-serving voices), leading to a new era of hope in our city, and as we suggest in the headline of today’s VanRamblings’ posting, the death of cynicism in Vancouver civic politics.

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Sunday Reflection | Save Your Life | EWG’s Dirty Dozen Foods

June 17, 2018Environment, Food & Health, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

EWG: The Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen & Clean 15 Foods | Eat Organic

From August 2016 through the end of October of that year, from the initial diagnosis of my terminal, inoperable Stage 4 hilar cholangeocarcinoma, I simply stopped eating. No appetite, simply wasn’t hungry. Didn’t feel well.

Not only did I have no appetite, but my entire intestinal system was in an uproar and in the early stages of shutdown, with my kidneys, gallbladder, biliary tract and bile duct, pancreas and liver pretty much shot and so cancer-ridden as to dramatically compromise my tenure on this Earth, my being kept alive a function of my Vancouver General Hospital gastro-intestinal surgeon, Dr. Fergal Donnellan, placing stents into my bile duct to keep things functioning, alleviating the jaundice that was serving to compromise my immune system, my bilirubin count up in the 200 range (normal bilirubin count: 17), my liver shot, my jaundiced body (but not spirit) causing me to glow yellow — not that I could see any difference between how I look normally, and the apparent way I looked to friends in this three month span of 2016 — keeping me bed-ridden, or in the hospital.

The bile duct system in the intestines, the organs and ducts that make and store bile (a fluid made by the liver that helps digest fat), and release it into the small intestine. The biliary tract includes the gallbladder and bile ducts inside and outside.

Of course, aside from writhing around in my bed or finding myself in meu banheiro for hours on end, there was an upside to all the pain and misery that was now consuming my life: I was losing weight like mad, and I wasn’t spending any money! Now, anyone who knows me — as my daughter Megan is wont to point out — knows that I tend to be tubby. Dropping 70 pounds & not spending any money — what a great programme, I tell ya.

I didn’t announce my hilar cholangeocarcinoma to the world until October 7th, 2016, doing so only after arriving home from Vancouver General Hospital after a day of surgery, still a little fuzzy and discombobulated from the anaesthetic, but ready to reveal to the world that my time on this Earth was seemingly and abruptly, not to mention, painfully, coming to an end.

Not really oh woe is me, I thought, nor did I relay the information of my cancer diagnosis in an attempt to gain sympathy (or, empathy for that matter — as came to be my experience in the next months, though, as one person after another revealed their own cancer diagnoses to me), but more as a matter-of-fact “this is what’s happening to me, it’s been good knowing you, thank you for your support, and for indulging my idiosyncrasies all these years” message to friends on Facebook, and a whole lot of good-natured folks I had no idea had been following me on Facebook, among them friends I’d not communicated with in years, sometimes decades.

Now, my friend (and as it turned out, personal saviour), author and mom and lover of Alan Bayless, the incredible and talented — and “make no mistake, I would not be here today were it not for Maureen’s intervention on my behalf, consistently the only person and the right person to see me through the scarifying experience of my cancer journey, and the only person who knows the whole story” — Maureen Bayless, about whom I will write, and dedicate more than one VanRamblings column in the future, in the story of my cancer journey, which will commence publishing in the aftermath of the current and hopeful 2018 Vancouver municipal election.

Marlie Oden, with whom I had worked as an arts journalist with the Lower Mainland community newspapers, as Director of Special Projects at Vancouver Magazine, and later publisher-editor of Festival magazine, published in support of Leonard Schein’s Festival Cinemas, upon reading in early October of my cancer diagnosis, got on the phone with me, texted and messaged me, told me of her own arduous cancer journey, a cancer with which she was still living, and set about to make arrangements to arrive at my now dark, dank and utterly messy home in mid-October, laden with an organic chicken from Whole Foods, as well as soups and prepared breakfast items from Whole Foods, salads and more, she and her husband leaving me a store of food that took me more than a month to eat, Marlie insisting, “Okay, Raymond. You’re going to eat well. You’re going to eat organically. You may not have much of an appetite, but you’re going to find a way to eat this food, whether you want to or not, because you need nutrition to keep up your strength, and to fight your cancer.” Hallelujah!

And with that, Marlie and her husband were gone.

I should probably say that I’d had no communication with Marlie in 20 years! Yet, there she was in my home, placing food into my refrigerator, giving me much needed instruction, showing a caring that was so heartening and spiritually uplifting that — as dire as everything looked, and would for months to come — for the first time in two months, Marlie gave me hope. You’re reading this, so you know I’m still around. When you run across Marlie and Maureen thank them for me, will ya — please.

I managed to consume the chicken over a one-week period, the soups over the month and into November, and most of the breakfasts over the course of the next month. So, thanks to Marlie and her husband, I was eating again, my weight loss slowed, and my strength began to return.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like (maybe that should read, love) strong, emotionally healthy, and spiritually sound women — any part of me that is at all recommendable comes in consequence to the women in my life, women who have cared for me against all reason, I have often thought to myself, but who have taken on the task of helping to make me a better, a healthier and more spiritually-centered person, women who have given me life and a sense of purpose. Marlie Oden and Maureen Bayless certainly are members of the cadre of compassion who have contributed to creating the best parts of me, and of how I daily bring myself to the world.

Read through the entire Dirty Dozen list of foods that the Environmental Working Group insists you should never eat, unless they’re organically-grown.

Marlie says, “Eat organic,” I eat organic. Of course, I already knew that — but I’d bought into the myth that eating organically would cost a fortune, and living like a pauper like I do, I thought, “Well, I oughta be eating organically, but can I really afford it?” Turned out, though, that eating organically doesn’t cost any more money than eating pesticide-ridden, corporate-farmed agri-business foods. For instance, if you look at the graphic above, you’ll notice that strawberries are first on the list of foods that if you’re not eating them organically, and you’re consuming pesticide-ridden agri-business strawberries, as I wrote on Facebook the other day …

“Strawberries contain residue from up to 22 pesticides — eating ‘regularly grown’ strawberries is like eating little bits of death, as yummy as they may look and taste. UNLESS, unless, unless the strawberries are ORGANIC — in which case, you may enjoy this life-giving food to your heart’s content. A couple of weeks ago, Whole Foods Market had 3 pounds of organic strawberries for only $9.99 (regular price, $6.98 a pound). This week, Choices Market has stepped up to plate, offering 3 pounds of organic strawberries for only $9.94!”

If you’re a Trump / Alex Jones conspiracy theorist, and you believe that there’s no difference between organic foods and agri-business grown foods, have at it, believe what you will. Me, I’m going to eat organic, especially when organic foods are often cheaper, much cheaper, than agri-business grown foods you’ll find at your local grocer. For instance, organic celery at Safeway — which is #10 on the Dirty Dozen list of foods you should stay away from, or as the folks at the Environmental Working Group write, “More than 95% of conventional celery samples tested positive for pesticides. A maximum of 13 pesticides were detected on a sample of conventional celery.” Oh gosh, I want to have some conventional celery right now … not — is consistently cheaper, often much cheaper, than the agri-business celery that you’re probably buying regularly, or periodically.

Read through the entire Clean Fifteen list of foods that the Environmental Working Group suggests you can eat, even if the foods are not organically-grown.

The Environmental Working Group also publishes a Clean Fifteen list of foods you can consume without having to be too concerned as to whether they’re organic or not, including as above, avocadoes, corn on the cob, pineapples, cabbages, onions, frozen peas, papayas, mangoes, eggplant, honeydew melons, canteloupe, cauliflower and broccoli — because these foods have thick, impenetrable “skins”, or the Environmental Working Group found that these foods had no detectable pesticide residues.

You’ll notice, too, that on both lists, at the bottom of the linked pages there’s an expanded list of foods under each category, so you’ll want to take a look at the expanded lists, in order to know what you should, or should not, be eating.

If you’re a parent of young children, as is the case with OneCity Vancouver’s Alison Atkinson, Cara Ng, Anna Chudnovsky and Christine Boyle (and their respective partners), or if you’re a good BC NDP supporting parent of a young child, like Kurt Heinrich and Theodora Lamb (should I have reversed the order of names? hmmm), Stepan Vdovine and Mira Oreck, or physician-to-be Cailey Lynch who’s co-habiting with some guy named David Eby (isn’t he British Columbia’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General, and maybe they’re, like I dunno, married? … who knows, it’s so beyond me …) — and, how in heck did I manage to miss mentioning Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova again? … ew, she’s not going to like that, and what about new mom, and great and democratic Park Board Commissioner, Erin Shum, or mom-to-Grade One student and fiscally prudent and dedicated and hard-working Vancouver School Board trustee, Lisa Dominato? — or even if you’re not a died-in-the-wool progressive — or, maybe you’re the hope of our future, COPE candidate for City Council, Derrick O’Keefe, and his partner, Andrea Pinochet-Escudero, who have a great young son — it’s probably in the best interests of your family, and your family’s health, to take a look at both EWG lists, and act according to your conscience & as I say above, in yours and your family’s best interests.

A Park Excursion, and An Opportunity for Peace & Companionship

May 20, 2018Diversions, Environment, Food & Health, Travel, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Perhaps you’re a pauper like me, or maybe it is that you are parsimonious of nature. Maybe it’s that the prospect of actually driving out of town seems daunting, finding your way through traffic and searching endlessly for the route to your destination all just a little bit too much for you.
Or, maybe you wish to save the environment, but can’t yet afford an electric vehicle, and renting one is cost prohibitive, driving to Golden Ears Provincial Park in your old beater, or gas guzzling SUV, not the way that you’re choosing to live your life these days as a responsible citizen.
Well, you’re in luck. Today on VanRamblings, something you may have read or heard about elsewhere, but perhaps not.

ParkBus | Vancouver to Golden Ears Park | FREE bus service | Weekends | Summer 2018

In any case, today on VanRamblings you will learn about ParkBus, an absolutely FREE bus service that will run over the summer months — sponsored by the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) — that will take you on a pleasant and stress-free out-of-town excursion from Vancouver to Golden Ears Park, each and every Saturday and Sunday, starting this upcoming July 7th, and ending just shy of two months later, on September 2nd.
Operated by Vancouver-based Environmental Sound Transportation, ParkBus will depart from MEC’s Vancouver Store, located at 130 West Broadway, just east of Cambie, each Saturday and Sunday morning, returning in the late afternoon. Did we mention that ParkBus is free?

Just look at that comfy, spacious and ultra-clean air-conditioned bus above, the ParkBus of which we write today.
You’ll need to pre-book your seat online with a credit card deposit (to prevent no-shows), with reservations set to open up in mid-June, when you can book your seats by calling 1-800-928-7101. Vancouver to Golden Ears Park is a hop, skip and jump 55 kilometres from Vancouver, the journey taking all of one-hour, surrounded by families and folks intent on having a good and responsible time in British Columbia’s welcoming wilderness.
You can learn about Leave No Trace principles from a ride facilitator, too.

Hikers on a day excursion to Golden Ears Provincial Park | FREE ParkBus service.

At 62,540 hectares, Golden Ears is one of the biggest parks in British Columbia. Known for its extensive trail system for hikers and equestrian use, Golden Ears also is home to Alouette Lake, which is a popular spot for swimming, windsurfing, water-skiing, canoeing, boating, and fishing.
ParkBus drops you off at Gold Creek Parking, inside the park, conveniently located within walking distance of a number of beautiful hiking trails.

John Coupar: Incoming Park Board Chair, An Inauspicious Start

November 18, 2014BC Politics, Environment, Park Board, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

On December 1st, a new Vancouver Park Board will take office.
The Non-Partisan Association, with the support of VanRamblings and in support of incoming Park Board Chairperson, John Coupar, with a goodly number of the public, were elected to a majority position around the Park Board table: second-term Park Board Commissioner, John Coupar, will be the individual his majority NPA party colleagues — Sarah Kirby-Yung, Erin Shum, and Casey Crawford — will choose to lead them over the next year.
The remaining, newly-elected members of the Vancouver Park Board include the Green Party of Vancouver’s Stuart Mackinnon, who held office on Park Board from 2008 til 2011, his fellow Green Party elected, Michael Wiebe, and lone Vision Vancouver Park Board elected, Catherine Evans.
The most politically astute politicos sitting around the Park table are Stuart Mackinnon and Catherine Evans, both veterans of the political wars, savvy, extremely bright, community-oriented politicos, Stuart Mackinnon’s claim to fame his dedication to democratic governance and community involvement in Park Board decision-making, and Catherine Evans — appointed to the Board of the Vancouver Public Library in 2009, and most recently, Chairperson of the Board, and more than any other of the newly-electeds, an individual who throughout her adult life has dedicated herself to building consensus, in the community, as a member of Boards on which she sat, and in every other endeavour in which she has engaged, where it was necessary to move forward collectively, wholly, in the best interests of all.
Needless to say, Vancouver voters were wise to elect Catherine Evans — who topped the polls this Saturday evening past, with 64,707 votes, quite clearly, the consensus choice of the people — and Stuart Mackinnon (56,406 votes), the Green Party running their 2014 campaign for office on a shoestring budget, approximately 5% of that of the two mainstream parties, Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association, to Park Board.
As anyone who reads VanRamblings on a regular basis is aware, we are more than a little over-the-moon about the Non-Partisan Association’s incoming Chairperson, John Coupar, for most assuredly, one of John’s NPA colleagues will nominate him for the position of Chairperson of Park Board.

John Coupar Wins Re-Election | Photograph by: Wayne Leidenfrost , PNG

VanRamblings had hoped for a unanimous vote of support for the principled & utterly humane Mr. Coupar, a defender of Vancouver’s parks system like no other — you may wish to read VanRamblings’ profile of Mr. Coupar, for an insight as to why we have written so generously about the man, about his character and integrity, and commitment to public service.
As of Monday, November 18th, the prospect of John Coupar’s ascension to the role of Chairperson, Vancouver Park Board, receiving the unanimous consent of all of his Park Board Commissioner colleagues sitting around the Park Board table would very much seem to be in doubt.
When John Coupar was running for a second term at Park Board, his platform was a simple, but transformative: restoration of a parks system that had been desecrated and allowed to fall into abandon under an overly politicized Vision Vancouver Park Board, and an early resolution of the almost two-year-old dispute between six of Vancouver’s community centre associations, and the previous Park Board and City of Vancouver, the latter charge led by the — it has always seemed to VanRamblings — none-too-psychologically stable City Manager, Dr. Penny Ballem.
On this Sunday past, on the day following Saturday’s surprising, and not-so-surprising, Vancouver civic election vote, VanRamblings had contact with Stuart Mackinnon, who indicated he was in partial agreement that …

A majority Vancouver City Council will subvert everything that Park Board will attempt to do — which, of course, doesn’t meant that a Park Board led by John Coupar and Stuart Mackinnon won’t be a strong defender of our beleaguered parks and recreation system, but rather that Vision Vancouver will attempt to starve the Park Board of funds, and go to war with a Park Board no longer under its control, employing the ugliest of tactics, while undermining their own elected, Catherine Evans, who is a good person, and someone the entire Board will both enjoy working with, and from whom the Board has much to learn.

To be perfectly frank, Stuart, I have concerns in respect of John Coupar’s fitness to lead the fight, and the possible consequences for his health. John’s goals as a Park Board Commissioner have been simple ones, and are what brought him into public life: John Coupar wishes to serve the public, and to protect the integrity of our parks.

Certainly none of the other NPA elected are capable, or possess the political sophistication necessary to take the fight to Vision (at least not yet). In fact, it very well may be you, Stuart, who in the coming years emerges, at some point in the future, both as the Chair of the Park Board, & the public face of the defense of the interests of all of us who have a deep caring for our Vancouver parks and recreation system.

I have no doubt that you are up for the fight, if it comes to that.

I am concerned, at present, for the employment of Park Board General Manager, Malcolm Bromley, with whom I have very much been impressed since his arrival from Ontario, in 2010. At the time Malcolm was hired, City Manager, Dr. Penny Ballem, changed the terms of his employment contract, such that as had always been the case previously, and was the case with the outgoing Park Board GM, Susan Mundick (who was “dismissed” in 2010), the incoming PB GM would report not to the Park Board Chair, but to her — creating divided loyalties for Mr. Bromley.

Malcolm Bromley has proven in his short time at Park Board to be a forward-thinking, dedicated public servant, who has well-served the public interest, a person of integrity and character who in the most difficult of circumstances, has somehow managed to troll the roiling waters of discontent between the City Manager’s office, and Park Board — even during the tenure of the Vision Vancouver-led Park Board — that did not always do the bidding of the notoriously demanding, brooks no dissent, it’s my way or the highway, City Manager.

I believe that Vision Vancouver will almost certainly move to make application to the provincial government to change the Vancouver Charter, to convert the independently-elected Park Board into a Committee of Council, employing an argument of citizen indifference (bordering on hostility, among some members of the public, they will say) to Vancouver Park Board, the Park Board as just another level of government that “drains the taxpayers’ pocketbook.”

In such a scenario, Vancouver Park Board would certainly mount a vigorous defense of the interests of Park Board and all it represents, no doubt reminding Dr. Ballem and the members of Vancouver City Council that the Vancouver Charter clearly stipulates that dissolution of Park Board requires a 2/3 majority vote of Park Board Commissioners — to which Vision Vancouver would almost certainly reply, “Application has been made to repeal that particular section of the Charter.”

Clearly, an action in Supreme Court would ensue, which would be funded out of the public purse. As anyone who has followed the decision-making thought processes of the estimable Dr. Ballem, and the elected Vision Vancouver members of Council, the office of the City Manager, with the full support of the Vision councillors, would move to deny Park Board the necessary funds to mount a legal defense of the position of Park Board, before the Courts.

Make no mistake: the next four years at Park Board may very well prove gruelling, indeed. Park Board Commissioners will have to keep a wary eye on those persons at City Hall who, to the public detriment, would use Park Board as their political whipping boy.

Job number one for the incoming Park Board must be to seek the support of the broadest coalition of members of the public, and to maintain and build on that public support for one of Vancouver’s most cherished instituitions.

Now is not the time for division on Park Board, nor among members of the public who present to Park Board, and whose interests are many and varied. Park Board, with the generous support of the citizens of Vancouver, must become a united force in defense of Vancouver’s much-beloved — and, perhaps, imperiled — Vancouver parks and recreation system.

Given the potential for a circumstance such as the one described above to unfold, VanRamblings was surprised and very disappointed to read of incoming Park Board Chairperson John Coupar’s decision to, as his first order of business around the Park Board table to reverse a motion passed by the outgoing Vision Vancouver Park Board, to ban the breeding of cetaceans in captivity at the Vancouver Aquarium, perhaps the single most divisive issue he might have chosen to engage as he and his Park Board colleagues undertake a restorative programme of change at Park Board, in defense of Vancouver’s very much untended to and beleaguered parks system, and in defense of Vancouver’s beloved community centres, which have suffered from the hostile actions of City Manager, Penny Ballem, and the Vision Vancouver majority administration at Vancouver City Hall.

VanRamblings posted the following to Facebook last evening …

[Update: Apparently, John Coupar has left the employ of the company which put him into conflict. The NPA’s reverse motion will pass 4-3]

Green Party of Vancouver Stuart Mackinnon’s first public pronouncement related to the Supreme Court action this upcoming Thursday, as Mr. Mackinnon mounted a vigorous defense of Vancouver’s community centre associations — one expects because it is the most important issue that should be of concern to the incoming Park Board Commissioners, an issue on which all Vancouver citizens are united, and one of the primary reasons there remains on the Park Board, only one lone member of Vision Vancouver, and the least partisan member of Vision Vancouver, at that — John Coupar, in all his infinite wisdom and lack of political astuteness — expounds on the single most divisive issue that has come before Park Board in 2014, an issue that reached compromise resolution this past July, following the presentations of more than 90 members of the public — and many, many more protesting outside — who expressed their reasoned opposition to the continued containment of whales, and other cetaceans, at the Vancouver Aquarium.
In respect of the about-to-become newly-elected Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board, the estimable John Coupar, VanRamblings does not express concern that Mr. Coupar would act to fulfill a campaign promise that was made by NPA mayoral candidate, Kirk LaPointe, in the early days of his campaign for office — and a platform tenet about which VanRamblings expressed deep concern to Mr. LaPointe, as a divisive issue, and one that was ill-suited to a candidate for office who was attempting to present himself as a mayoral candidate for “all the people”.

Ainslie Kwan, President, Killarney Community Centre Society, in Supreme Court Thursday

Rather, VanRamblings’ concern relates to the inadvisability of John Coupar choosing as divisive an issue as reversing the motion on the ban of the breeding of cetaceans in captivity, as an issue of primary concern that he would express to the public (in a most unfortunate joking manner on Global TV last evening), as his first order of business at the Park Board table.
Surely, Mr. Coupar, the pending court case on Thursday must be of greater concern to you, and to your Non-Partisan Association colleagues, more deserving of your collective attention, and deserving of an outreach to the incoming Green Party of Vancouver Park Board Commissioners than moving forward a reversal of a motion — that had you left it well enough alone — would simply have died on the order paper. You should know better.