On Saturday afternoon, when returning home on the bus from a friend’s place, in checking our Facebook timeline on our iPhone (as we are wont to do), we ran across a post by former Coalition of Vancouver Electors City Councillor, Tim Louis, titled Shauna Sylvester: A Trojan horse for Vision?
For reasons we have yet to get a handle on, VanRamblings found ourselves becoming emotionally verklempt and stricken, as if we had just taken a punch to the gut. Our whole demeanour saddened. Stumbling off the bus at the stop nearest to our home, we had to steady ourself, leaning our arm against a building wall protusion, remaining stock still, our eyes downcast, standing there for a number of minutes, before finally making our way home to our cozy co-op apartment, at which point upon entering the living room, we slumped down onto the sofa, where we remained for a half hour.
VanRamblings was struck, upon re-reading Tim’s piece, by what we feel is the rank unfairness and mis-characterization of a person of conscience, a strong, accomplished woman with agency, a social justice warrior who has fought for inclusivity and for a fairer and more just world during the course of her entire adult life, one of the kindest, most welcoming and spiritually soulful women we have encountered during the course of our own lifetime.
A digression. VanRamblings has known Tim Louis well for 14 years. We worked on his 2005 re-election campaign, and in 2008 acted as a co-campaign manager for Tim (along with his spouse, Dr. Penny Parry, and if memory serves, longtime Tim Louis devotee and founder of Free Geek Vancouver, Ifny LaChance), creating his campaign website — with the able assistance of our longtime friend, current Vancouver Courier civic affairs columnist, Mike Klassen (yes, Michael — then a member of the dreaded Vancouver Non-Partisan Association — was instrumental in creating Tim’s 2008 and 2011 campaign websites, a job assumed by COPE Executive Director, Sean Antrim, in the 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign).
In each of the campaigns we worked on closely with Tim, we posted regularly to his campaign website, shot and edited video, and assisted him in developing a platform in each of three municipal election cycles – playing a key role in developing Tim’s 2014 affordable housing and transit policy (which, if truth be told, was a direct steal from Dr. Patrick Condon, a Mayoral aspirant in the current civic election, & a longtime, well-respected Professor of Urban Planning at the University of British Columbia).
VanRamblings, too, is a longtime devotee of the estimable Mr. Louis. But we think he’s got it wrong in 2018. As we’ve suggested before, in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, when men are allies in the fight for sustaining social justice for women, it is wrong-headed (and sexist, at the very least, we believe) to attack a women of character whose values, for the most part, he shares, and whose core values all progressively-minded voters would most assuredly share, support, champion and celebrate.
VanRamblings has been criticized in the past for being too quick to employ the word misogyny in circumstances such as the one we describe above — unsurprisingly, this castigation always coming from men, as if somehow misogyny and the ingrained prejudice against women long evident in our culture does not constitute a fact of life for all women, most particularly in western society as evidenced in the denigration of women who deign to challenge male dominance. One is left to wonder if an ingrained misogynistic attitude does not inform and lay at the centre of Tim’s article.
End of digression.
In a discussion with Ms. Sylvester (from here on in, our intention is to, mostly, refer to Ms. Sylvester as Shauna, as an acknowledgement of her innate humanity, and certainly not as any intended sign of inappropriate familiarity or disrespect) eight days ago, at the OneCity Vancouver Membership Meeting, we voiced to her that we would be “mean” to her in the column we would publish about her “independent” candidacy for Mayor of Vancouver. Her response: “Why?” Why, indeed? In the column we had written and intended to post today, we employed the sardonic, offhand style of commentary we are often wont to employ on VanRamblings.
We’ve scrapped that already written — and, we thought, “entertaining” and informative — column in favour of today’s, we hope more humane, ramble.
Not that we intend to forego reporting on concerns about Ms. Sylvester’s candidacy, concerns that are being widely expressed in the Vancouver political community. To fail to report out would be to do a disservice to VanRamblings readers, and the cause of journalism – which, as celebrated muckraking writer Finley Peter Dunne opined in the late 19th century is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” And so we shall.
The photo you see above — published in a January 16th, 2018 CBC news online article, written by journalist Maryse Zeidler — sees Shauna Sylvester standing beside longtime Chief of Staff to Mayor Gregor Robertson, Mike Magee, the photo taken at this year’s Vision Vancouver Annual General Meeting, one week after Mr. Robertson announced that he would not seek a fourth term of office at Vancouver City Hall.
The photo is meant to suggest to voters, or remind them, that Shauna is a died-in-the-wool Visionista, a Gregor Robertson devotee and, as Tim Louis “points out” in his brief article published this past Saturday, a “trojan horse” and as Tim also writes, “anything but independent” and almost certainly “a placeholder” for a discredited civic party “certain” to lose power on the evening of Saturday, October 20th, British Columbia’s municipal election date. The photo above is also meant to “remind” voters that …
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Shauna sat as a member of the Board of Directors of Vision Vancouver;
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Shauna is a longtime friend — and acolyte — of Vision Vancouver founder Joel Solomon, who journalist Frances Bula characterized as The Unlikely Revolutionary in a June 1st 2009 feature article in Vancouver Magazine, Mr. Solomon a longtime target of Vivian Krause, and Canada’s right-wing forces (and, no, we’re not going to link to any of those attack articles), Joel Solomon as the “left wing” counterpart to the “right wing” longtime NPA President, Peter Armstrong;
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Shauna is the “woo woo” candidate, as a member of the “cult forces” of Cortes Island’s pricey Hollyhock Spiritual Centre, about which journalist Shannon Rupp wrote in an article in The Georgia Straight, “I assume this artificial feeling of love and acceptance is what people are paying for, but I have to admit I find these get-togethers oppressive. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of Hollyhock is its culture of conformity — Goddess forbid anyone should question anything. After five days here, I’ve found Hollyhock is really two places: the site itself is delightful, but the half-baked spiritual and psychological concepts it peddles make me uneasy.” Note: Gregor Robertson owns a home on Cortes Island, and is a charter member of Hollyhock, as is current Vancouver City Manager, Sadhu Johnson (as well as other senior administrators at Vancouver City Hall);
And, finally, as the pièce de résistance …
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Shauna chaired a Mayor’s task force establishing an “affordable housing rate” in Vancouver — and as was recently pointed out by Vancouver Kingsway NDP MP Don Davies, at an Affordable Housing Forum — at a ludicrous $1700 for a studio apartment, $2250 for a one-bedroom, and $2850 for a two-bedroom apartment, on Vancouver’s eastside!
The above “talking points”, then, are what have been making the rounds among the left cognoscenti in Vancouver, are denying Ms. Sylvester agency in her campaign to become Vancouver’s next Mayor, and have caused COPE and Team Jean to refuse to even consider an accommodation with Vision Vancouver in the upcoming civic election.
Among the ideological left, it was always thus.
All of which begs the question: What kind of Mayor would Shauna Sylvester become, should she emerge victorious late in the evening of October 20th?
Well, first of all, Shauna is a woman, and in Vancouver we are one of the few jurisdictions on the planet who have never elected a woman to become Mayor of their city, which is a stain on the reputation of a city that purports to be and widely extols itself as a “progressive city”. Vancouver can hardly call itself “progressive” when we’ve never elected a woman as our Mayor.
All of the social justice issues that Vision Vancouver has promoted during their term in office as the majority party at City Hall are central to Shauna’s vision of the world, and as such she would be a staunch defender of the progressive values that Vancouverites are known the world over for celebrating within the cultural mosaic that is early 21st century Vancouver.
Vancouver would remain a sanctuary city, where police would not ask for I.D. or otherwise seem to harass citizens who are persons of colour, and where no one is illegal; Vancouver would continue to champion LGBTQ2+ issues; would remain a nuclear free zone; would continue to implement the 10-year Women’s Equity Strategy, to make Vancouver a “fair, safe and inclusive city” for all women; would continue to implement the benefits of our city’s ongoing active transportation initiatives (and, yes, for those of you who are not paying attention, that means more bike lanes — about which initiative VanRamblings continues to be, and will always be supportive); and would work with senior levels of government to ensure the construction of truly affordable housing (defined as one-third of a person’s income), while continuing the city’s work with the Community Land Trust to ensure the construction of co-operative housing, such as the recently-opened 135-unit family friendly Railyard Housing Co-op at Quebec and 1st.
Mayor Shauna Sylvester would work to continue the important environmental initiatives that are critical to the future of our children and our families; would work with provincial Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Judy Darcy, and provincial Minister of Justice, David Eby, to work towards the elimination of the scourge that is the fentanyl crisis, most evident on Vancouver’s downtown eastside but also evident across our city, while supporting the good work of Sarah Blyth, Constance Barnes and others who work with the Overdose Prevention Society; would be a fair and judicious chair of Vancouver City Council meetings, providing all elected City Councillors a voice in the decision-making that affects the quality of life in Vancouver, and as such would be a mediator and an agent for change to bring Vancouver City Council together to enact programmes and legislation that would enhance the lives of all Vancouver citizens.
To be honest, and let’s be damn sure about this, Shauna Sylvester would make a first-rate Mayor for the City of Vancouver were voters to cast their ballot for her in sufficient numbers come this October, such that Shauna Sylvester would become our first ever, compassionate woman Mayor, in a four year term that would begin this November, not a fire-breathing radical Mayor, but a neighbourhood-championing Mayor who would put the interests of Vancouver families, families of every description in all of our communities, first on her political & social agenda, and make us all proud.
