Today is the first day of the rest of the lives of overwhelmingly popular Mayor-elect Ken Sim, his new Councillor-elects, ABC (A Better City) Vancouver’s Brian Montague, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner, and Lenny Zhou, and former and oh-so-triumphant and returning Vancouver City Councillors, ABC’slovingly re-elected City Councillors, Sarah Kirby-Yung — who topped the polls, yay, Sarah! — the ever-so-outstanding Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh, the wonderfully humane Green Party of Vancouver’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, and OneCity Vancouver’s ‘hope of the left’ Christine Boyle, all eleven of whom will be sworn into office at 1:15pm on this, what is supposed to be, sunny Monday afternoon, where there will be glad tidings within the luxuriously comfortable and City-owned Orpheum Theatre.
Monday afternoon’s festivities are an ‘invite only’ affair. Although OneCity Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle posted two charitable invitations to us, we opted to accept Councillor-elect Mike Klassen’s kind invitation — we have been friends for, I believe, 29 years this year, was present at his wedding, and for the birth of his daughter, helped Michael (we call him Michael) collect his election signs the day after the 2011 Vancouver municipal election when he came so achingly close to being elected to Vancouver City Council that year … so, it seems fitting that VanRamblings would be present — along with his wife Stacey, and Michael’s entire family — for this most august of occasions in Mike Klassen’s life.
The link to the live stream of the City of Vancouver Councillor Inauguration Ceremony will be available at …
Vancouver citizens are invited to the Vancouver Park Board’s Inaugural Ceremony, where the seven newly-elected Park Board Commissioners will take the oath of office. This event — unlike regular Park Board meetings — will not be live streamed, so if you want to see Vancouver’s Park Board Commissioners be sworn into office, you’ll have to attend at …
Date: Monday, November 7, 2022 Time: 7 p.m. Location: VanDusen Botanical Garden
5251 Oak Street
Vancouver, BC V6M 4H1
There’s a 30-70 chance that VanRamblings will attend the Park Board Inaugural, because we love the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, we love Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation, it’s probable that there’ll be a surfeit of past Park Board Commissioners on hand (and, you guessed it, we love our past Park Board Commissioners) — and we expect the event will be drama free … although in these times of disapprobation, you never know what protesters might have in mind to disrupt this otherwise celebratory event, in this most inviting of settings.
Against our better judgement, VanRamblings will attend tonight’s Vancouver Board of Education Inaugural, which will be held in the School Board’s regular meeting Board Room. Mostly, we’ll be attending this (could be, sadly, contentious) Inaugural to support our friend, re-elected trustee Christopher Richardson — let us say it again, the finest man we know — a former Vancouver School Board Chairperson, and someone we think will well serve the interests of children enrolled in the Vancouver school district — particularly those children with learning difficulties — with honour, unswerving dedication and unparalleled distinction.
Of course, VanRamblings will be delighted to see past Vancouver Board of Education Chairperson, Dr. Janet Fraser — who, as we’ve written previously, as Chairperson always conducts a clinic on how to run a meeting fairly and judiciously — and her Green Party of Vancouver trustee colleague, Lois Chan-Pedley, as well as OneCity Vancouver’s Jennifer Reddy, and her new best friend, COPE’s Suzie Mah, the latter of whom we’re looking forward to seeing being sworn in, and sharing some cake and a (non-alcoholic) beverage with afterwards, in the cafeteria.
Of course, VanRamblings will invite Christopher over to share the celebration with us — after all, Ms. Mah and Mr. Richardson will be professional colleagues for the next four years, and getting together around food often proves propitious, indeed.
Date: Monday, November 7, 2022 Time: 7 p.m. Location: Vancouver School Board offices
1580 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC V6J 5K8
It would seem that VanRamblings has returned to publishing. We have a great deal to say, to write and record in the coming days and weeks. See you back here soon!
Vancouver voters ovewhelmingly elected a new, centrist, common sense municipal government, at Vancouver City Hall, Park Board and School on Saturday night, electing ABC Vancouver’s Mayor-elect Ken Sim with highest vote total in the city’s history, with 85,732 Vancouver citizens having cast a vote for Mayor-elect Sim.
All seven ABC Vancouver Council candidates — including Sarah Kirby-Yung, who topped the polls, along with her Council colleagues Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh, elected to a 2nd term on Vancouver City Council — now includes, ABC Vancouver Councillor-elects Brian Montague, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner and Lenny Zhou, all of whom will be sworn into office on Monday, November 7th.
Joining the ABC Vancouver majority on Council, three returning City Councillors, who barely squeaked into office: the Green Party’s Adriane Carr, elected with a paltry 41,831 votes, a full 20,562 votes behind Councillor-elect Zhou. For the first time in Vancouver municipal electoral history a Councillor was elected to civic government with less than 40,000 votes: that would be OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, garnering only 38,465 votes — 6,990 fewer votes than were cast for her in 2018. Councillor Pete Fry — along with Sarah Kirby-Yung, the best communicator on Council, was elected to a 2nd term on Council, dropping from a second place finish in 2018, having garnered 61,806 votes first time out, dropping almost out of sight in 2022 with a miserly 37,270 votes — for a jaw-dropping loss of 24,536 votes.
VanRamblings will take pains to remind our readers that in our State of the Race column published on Wednesday, October 12th, we predicted — or at least held out the possibility of — a sweep of Council by candidates running for office at City Hall with ABC Vancouver, missing out only on naming Councillor-elect Lenny Zhou.
ABC Vancouver sweeps the election, running on their common sense platform, with prominent Vancouverites Chip Wilson and the Rocky Mountaineer’s Peter Armstrong supporting the party’s bid to assume city government — with a panoply of financial backers contributing enough money, so that ABC could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on television, radio, social media and ethnic press advertising to ensure a Ken Sim victory on Saturday night — are running ABC Vancouver Council candidates, incumbents Sarah Kirby-Yung — who we predict will top the polls — Rebecca Bligh and Lisa Dominato, who’ll be joined by “newcomers” Mike Klassen — a rock solid lock to be elected to Council — and fellow ABC Vancouver Council candidates, Peter Meiszner, Brian Montague and Lenny Zhou. The icing on the cake for ABC: when Peter Armstrong left the Non-Partisan Association, he had the NPA voter and membership lists in his possession. In addition, we understand that — as is the case with Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his Forward Together team, who the BC NDP are pulling out all the stops to re-elect Mr. Stewart — Kevin Falcon’s B.C. Liberal party is only too happy to turn over the party’s provincial membership and voters list to the ABC Vancouver campaign — which lists don’t count for much on Vancouver’s east side, but make a world of difference on getting out the vote on Vancouver’s west side.
VanRamblings will address the lack of generosity in 2nd term Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle’s tweet, published the day after the election. Believe us when we write that it wasn’t all that long ago that VanRamblings was quite as partisan as the good Ms. Christine Boyle: left, good; right, evil. Not a great construct we’ve come to believe, counter-productive, and dehumanizing, if truth be told.
Better not to demonize those who hold centrist views — in civic government that means: keeping tax increases low, prioritizing core spending initiatives, laser focusing on creating a safe, clean city, while ensuring the provision of services for citizens that includes timely snow removal, regular garbage pickup, maintenance of the transportation system that includes the filling of potholes, maintaining Vancouver’s water distribution and sewage systems, and processing applications at City Hall in a timely manner, all to serve the interests of Vancouver citizens.
Truth to tell, there’s not a right-winger among the elected ABC Vancouver Councillor-elects. Sarah Kirby-Yung is, by far, the most progressive Councillor at Vancouver City Hall, closely followed by Lisa Dominato, the author of British Columbia’s SOGI 123 programme — that helps educators make schools inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI) — and Rebecca Bligh, long a leading light and fighter within the LGBTQ2+ community.
As we wrote last week, Councillor-elect Mike Klassen is …
“Fair-minded, possessed of an umatched personal and professional integrity, and as a former première civic affairs columnist with the Vancouver Courier newspaper — his writing possessed of an integrity, a heart and a humanity that spoke both to his professionalism as a journalist, and to how Mike has always brought himself to the world.
In his work as a vice-president with the B.C. Home Care Providers Association, Mike Klassen gained a rapport with members of the New Democratic Party caucus that is second-to-none, each member of that caucus having come to respect Mike as someone who gets things done, someone with whom it is easy to work towards change for the better, someone who does his homework, and someone who is non-partisan in the interests of better serving the needs of British Columbians.”
Now, we’ll give you that VanRamblings, at this point in time, doesn’t know a great deal about Peter Meiszner — as it happens, though, Peter played an invaluable role in VanRamblings’ coverage of #VanElxn2022, offering needed advice and succour to us, as a writer and journalist, interacting with us always with heart, humanity and respect — Brian Montague and Lenny Zhou. Give us time, though.
And, no, ABC Vancouver Councillor-elects will not be bulldozing the tent encampments along East Hastings, but have committed to working with the provincial and federal governments that would see those currently housed in tents along East Hastings housed in comfy one-bedroom apartments, and the tents removed.
On election night, Mayor-elect Ken Sim told the Daily Hive’s Kenneth Chan that ABC Vancouver fully intends to implement their 94-point platform plan over their first 100 days in office, tackling crime and public safety issues, as the new majority Council commits to hiring 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses, expanding the existing Car 87/88 programme of pairing a police officer and mental health nurse in an unmarked vehicle for non-emergency mental health calls.
ABC Vancouver will also target help for Chinatown’s ailing business sector, while supporting the neighbourhood’s cultural organizations, and its residents.
Despite facing increasingly frequent instances of violent attacks, property damage, theft, public disorder issues, and other incidents that are anti-Asian in nature, the Chinatown community’s pleas for effective help went unheeded by the Kennedy Stewart administration, which largely ignored the problem.
Says ABC Vancouver Mayor-elect Ken Sim in his interview with The Daily Hive …
“We will take a very pragmatic approach to all the challenges and opportunities that are presented to us, and adopt a science-based approach, while meeting and consulting with healthcare providers and professionals, teachers, parents — just about anyone can contribute to a solution to the problems Vancouverites have faced in recent years. Quite simply, we’ll make better decisions, decisions that serve the interests of the community.”
Having read the above, do you have the impression ABC Vancouver is right wing?
VanRamblings believes that referring to the ABC Vancouver Councillor-elect team as “right wing” is not only dismissive and dehumanizing, it’s just plain, dead wrong.
Cyclists ride on a separated bike lane in Stanley Park
What VanRamblings could not possibly have predicted was that ABC Vancouver would sweep both Vancouver School Board, and Vancouver Park Board.
Vancouver’s incoming ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioner-elect majority are laying out priorities for their next four years in office.
“At the end of the fall we’re going to remove the temporary bike lane and restore full car access to the park. But then we’re going to spend the winter to come up with an engineered solution to maintain access to both bikes and cars,” Commissioner-Elect Laura Christensen told Global News.”
Park Board Commissioner-Elect Scott Jensen told CKNW’s Jill Bennett that the lane removal will coincide with the arrival of winter weather, expected to result in fewer cyclists. The plan would involve re-opening vehicle access to Beach Avenue. and a return to a “pre-pandemic Stanley Park configuration” over the winter.
Going forward, Jensen said the Board will look at “areas where we can provide a protected permanent bike lane so that cyclists who choose to use the interior bike route will be able to have areas where they will have that protection.”
“We talked a lot to cyclists, and the ongoing message we heard was that cycling up the hill from the bottom portion of the the roadway up to Prospect Point was an area of concern where they felt that was necessary to have a divided protected lane,” he said.
Jensen told CKNW that whatever solution the Board delivers will prioritize access to parking lots and the needs of businesses in the park.
The new Park Board will also move to make the city’s pilot project allowing alcohol in some parks permanent, and launch a new pilot looking at the city’s beaches.
As to the most contentious issue facing the Park Board Commissioner-elects, Christensen said the new majority would take a measured approach.
“The B.C. Supreme Court has been very clear that people have the right to camp in parks when there is no housing available, and we have no plans to evict them at this time,” she said. “However, in the meantime we’d like to increase maintenance and safety in the park, increasing cleanup, garbage pickup, things like that. “And we’ll be working with our ABC majority on council to provide housing options in the future, so that’s housing options with wraparound services and support.”
Vancouver’s new park commissioners will be officially sworn in on Nov. 7.
In a discussion with ABC Vancouver Board of Education trustee-elect, and a former Chairperson at Vancouver School Board, Christopher Richardson, last evening, VanRamblings was told that ABC Vancouver’s school trustee-elects have not, as yet, met to discuss implementation of the Board’s “new priorities”, but as Mayor-elect Ken Sim told the media yesterday, one School Board priority under an ABC Vancouver administration will include the return of the police liaison programme.
The successful police liaison programme — which ran for some ran for 50 years in Vancouver secondary schools — was cut last year by the current and outgoing Board. Mayor-elect Sim was passionate in his defense of the Vancouver School district’s police liaison programme which, as he told the press, kept students like him out of the clutches of the gangs who all but ran secondary schools across the Vancouver school district when he was growing up.
Another ABC Vancouver priority for implementation by the new Board, Mr. Richardson believes: re-instatement of the Honours programmes in Vancouver schools, cut by the current and outgoing Board last year in an attempt to provide lowest-common-denominator “equity” for students enrolled in Vancouver secondary schools. In cutting the Honours programmes in Vancouver secondary schools, the Board may have been well-intentioned in the taking of the decision to cut the Honours programme but were, VanRamblings believes, wrongheaded to deny secondary school students enrolled in the Vancouver school district access to such educational opportunities as the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme, that seeks to “provide an internationally acceptable university admissions qualification suitable for the growing mobile population of young people whose parents were part of the world of diplomacy, international and multinational organizations” by offering standardized courses and assessments for students aged 16 to 19. The IB programme is but one of the invaluable Honours programmes (such as the Honours Math programme at Templeton Secondary School) that were cut by the current and outgoing Vancouver Board of Education last year.
With advance polls having closed in Vancouver’s hard fought 2022 municipal election, there is one final day on which to cast your ballot: Saturday, October 15th.
Today, VanRamblings presents our previously published endorsement ballots, in the hope we might offer you some assistance in voting at the polls on Saturday.
We believe that the candidates whose names appear on the three endorsement ballots below represent the very best of the 137 candidates who came forward this year to help us build a better, a fairer and more just city for all.
Possessed of integrity, a deep caring for Vancouver, well able to enact the changes that must occur in our city — around the decision-making table in chambers at Vancouver City Hall, within the Park Board offices located at 1111 Beach Avenue, and in the large Committee room situated along the windowed north wall within the offices of the Vancouver School Board, each of the candidates whose names appear below are possessed of uncommon and sophisticated insight into the democratic decision-making process that brings about change for the better — and each candidate is prepared to act readily and judiciously on your behalf from the moment they are sworn into civic office as your duly elected representatives.
Here is the rationale behind choosing the names above, for Mayor and Council.
Voting for Park Board Commissioners to represent all of us, who will act as stewards of Vancouver’s parks & recreation system is crucial. Here’s the rationale behind why the seven candidates whose names appear above were selected.
Here is the rationale behind choosing the candidates who will sit on Vancouver’s critically important Board of Education, whose names you may see directly above.
Almost inevitable that VanRamblings would endorse Councillor Colleen Hardwick as Vancouver’s next Mayor, don’t you think?
Why is VanRamblings enthusiastically and wholeheartedly supporting and endorsingTEAM … for a Livable Vancouver’s Colleen Hardwick for Mayor of Vancouver?
Listen to what Patrick Condon — the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture — has to say about Colleen Hardwick.
Make no mistake, Colleen Hardwick is the only candidate running for Mayor in 2022 who is on your side, on the side of all of us who live within one of the 23 currently livable Vancouver neigbourhoods, that each of the other Mayoralty candidates would seek to destroy, as incumbent Mayor, Forward Together’s Kennedy Stewart, ABC Vancouver’s Ken Sim, the Non-Partisan Association’s Fred Harding, and Progress Vancouver’s Mark Marissen envision a future tower-driven city, encroaching on every neighbourhood, with twenty to seventy storey towers Vancouver’s almost inevitable future were any of these men to assume the Mayor’s office post-Election Day, only two short days from now, on Saturday, October 15th.
Colleen Hardwick is the only democrat running to be Mayor of Vancouver, the only candidate for Mayor that would pause, if not rescind, the Broadway Plan and Vancouver Plan, as she and her cohort of outstanding TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver’s candidates for Vancouver City Council would consult with those of us who live in each of the neighbourhoods across the city, towards building an inevitably more dense city, while developing renewed community plans that would give you a voice in how your neighbourhood would develop in the years to come.
Have we written that Sean Nardi is one of our very favourite candidates running for office as a TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver candidate for Vancouver City Council?
No? Well, now we have.
As a key organizer of the Fairview Slopes / South Granville Action Committee, Sean devoted countless hours to rallying the community to fight the out-of-scale for the neighbourhood, 28-storey Jameson Birch Street project, devoting hundreds of hours to analytical research and neighbourhood organizing. Sean’s painstaking fact-based advocacy work impressed the hell out a broad network of activists from across the city, City Councillors who sat up straight in their chairs when he addressed Council, senior staff within the labyrinthine City Hall bureaucracy, and our devoted civic affairs journalists. Believe us when we write, Sean means to make a difference — and with his newly-acquired MBA from Simon Fraser University, a dozen years of project management in the field of information technology, his hard-won expertise in problem-solving, as well as his work in crisis management and fiscal management, plus Sean’s work developing innovative strategies to build better, more efficiently, more humanely — always with a focus towards addressing issues involving our present climate emergency — Sean Nardi is definitely a candidate for Vancouver City Council for whom you want to cast a vote.
While most of our current crop of Vancouver City Councillors — not to mention, the current crop of Vancouver Mayoral candidates — consider themselves to be Gods on Mount Olympus, the holders of all knowledge, who believe they have the preordained right to rule over you, whether you like it or not, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick and her outstanding, feet planted firmly on the ground Council candidate slate walk the Earth just as you do.
TEAM will work for a livable, affordable city for local residents, for renters, housing co-op members, and condominium and home owners from across the city. TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver will focus on delivering homes at a lower cost, including for low wage workers, the homeless, and those experiencing housing insecurity.
Providing a mix of non-market and market housing, for rentals and ownership, including housing co-ops — where no one will pay more than 30% of their income to be housed — co-housing, secondary suites, multiple conversion dwellings, infill, laneways, multiplexes, townhouses, and apartments — planned in partnership with local residents at the scale of each neighbourhood, employing City-owned, provincial and federal Crown lands to build affordable housing across the city, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver is making the commitment to you that they will work to build affordable housing that will meet every Vancouver citizen’s needs.
TEAM Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick, and her outstanding and well-experienced TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver slate of candidates for Vancouver City Council, acknowledge the contract the City of Vancouver has entered into with the provincial government that will see the construction of towers within a two-block radius surrounding Millennium line Skytrain stations along the Broadway corridor. The notion that this mass, tower-driven style of development, though, might become Vancouver’s default housing typology is anathema to everything the TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver slate of candidates for Vancouver City Council stand for.
Campaign manager for, and candidate for Vancouver City Council with, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, the well-experienced and tremendously engaging Bill Tieleman, no matter which other candidates for office in 2022 that you are selecting to cast your vote for, Bill Tieleman is the must, must, must-elect for Vancouver City Council this year. No other candidate in this election is as accomplished as Bill Tieleman as a communicator, and as someone who has worked deep within government — from 1996 through 2001, for instance, as Director of Communications in the Premier’s office, in the first term when the provincial New Democratic Party was in power — Bill is a must-vote. You’ve likely seen Bill fighting — successfully! — for the re-opening of the Coast Guard station just west of the Burrard bridge, and seen him on your TV screens many evenings representing the interests of workers, and the community-at-large, always fighting the good fight on your behalf.
Did we mention that Bill Tieleman is VanRamblings’ “next door neighbour” (he lives in the condominium due west of our housing co-op home), and that Bill is the most honest and authentic person we know, that Bill brings himself to the world with such heartbreaking integrity, fidelity and sense of purpose, with an unmatched energy as he works for social change, and a fairer,more just city, region and province, that for us — on almost a daily basis — is little short of revelatory. Make sure you save a vote for Bill Tieleman, to help us realize the city we need.
Well, the six outstanding TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver slate of candidates for Vancouver City Council, including a heartbreakingly bright Colleen Hardwick for Mayor of Vancouver, constitutes for VanRamblings the must-elect majority that, when elected, will turn this city around, and set a course that will place the city back in the hands of Vancouver citizens, and not the developer class in our city, as TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver sets about to rebuild the trust of Vancouver residents, lost over the course of the past fourteen years, first with the 2008 election of a majority Vision Vancouver City Council, followed by Vision 2.0 this past four years.
Above, VanRamblings has identified the must-elect majority who will turn our city around, build affordable housing, build a human-scale transit system that serves the needs of Vancouver residents across the city, re-engage with all of us who live in one of Vancouver’s 23 vibrant neighbourhoods, address the issue of public safety, and work with the federal and provincial governments to respond to the human tragedy on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that warehouses our most vulnerable citizens in substandard SROs, where crimes against those who call the DTES home continues to run rampant, where death has become a tragically common feature of life around Main and Hastings, where we must do better, and with a TEAM-led civic administration at Vancouver City Hall, we will do better.
VanRamblings has known Mike Klassen for more than 30 years, as the most honourable person of our long acquaintance, a friend in a time of need, phenomenally skilled, a true neighbourhood advocate, and VanRamblings’ webmaster who created our site during the holiday season in 2003, débuting VanRamblings in 2004.
And now, Mike Klassen is running for Vancouver City Council, with ABC Vancouver.
We have known Mike Klassen, always, to be fair-minded, possessed of an umatched personal and professional integrity, and during his years as Vancouver’s première civic affairs columnist with the Vancouver Courier newspaper — where his writing was superb, his insights possessed of an integrity and a heart that spoke both to his professionalism as a journalist, and to how Mike has always brought himself to the world — there was no finer journalist in town. There is no one running for City Council in 2022 who is more intimately familiar with how government works, how decisions are made, and how change for the better comes about.
In his work as a vice-president with the B.C. Home Care Providers Association, Mike Klassen has gained a rapport with members of the New Democratic Party caucus that is second-to-none, each member of that caucus having come to respect Mike Klassen as someone who gets things done, someone with whom it is easy to work towards change for the better, someone who does his homework, someone who is non-partisan in the interests of better serving the needs of British Columbians, and those of us who call Vancouver home. Quite simply, Mike Klassen gets things done.
VanRamblings loves Mike Klassen, the candidate and our friend, with all our heart, and believe that he will emerge on Council as a generational difference maker for the better. Please, please, please save a vote for ABC Vancouver’s Mike Klassen.
Sarah Kirby-Yung. Yep, there she is above, VanRamblings’ favourite political figure, on Vancouver Park Board — where, as Chairperson of the Board, Sarah Kirby-Yung worked with then Park Board General Manager Malcolm Bromley to ban cetaceans in captivity (that means no more whales cruelly kept in “cages” at the Vancouver Aquarium) — and this past term on Council, as one might reasonably expect if you know Sarah Kirby-Yung at all, Ms. Kirby-Yung emerged as the hardest-working member on Council, steering clear of the toxic politics that weighed Vancouver City Council down for much of the past four years, on a Council where Ms. Kirby-Yung actually managed to build alliances across the political spectrum, among a disparate group of her fellow electeds — with Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor, Pete Fry (who VanRamblings is also endorsing!), who loves, respects and admires Sarah Kirby-Yung, as is the case with Sarah’s fellow ABC Vancouver colleagues, Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh, achieving this feat on a toxic City Council, where she even managed to bring an often too-partisan, and at times misogynist, Mayor on board as a fan — to get things done.
As VanRamblings has written previously, you have Sarah Kirby-Yung to thank for helping see us through the pandemic while providing aid to restaurants in dire financial straits, while championing restaurant patios, and side street plazas, where we could meet together in the open, in neighbourhoods across the city.
You know who the most productive person on City Council was this term , the Councillor who was always available to the press, by far Council’s best communicator (although, Pete Fry gives Sarah a run for her money), and the (am I allowed to say this?) the get ‘er done gal around the Council table, always, always, always on your side, fighting for you, and fighting for a better, fairer and more just city — Sarah Kirby-Yung. If you love our city, you must save a vote for Sarah Kirby-Yung.
And now, to our two new favourite, first time candidates in this 2022 Vancouver civic election who, if there is any justice at all, will win in a walk on Saturday night.
Stephanie Smith, 2022 Green Party of Vancouver candidate for Vancouver City Council
A labour and social justice activist living in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, since the late 1990s, Stephanie Smith has worked in the non-profit sector as a front line legal advocate, most recently in the Downtown Eastside at First United, providing legal advice to those who’ve come to her expressing a concern about the conditions of their lives.
“What that’s meant is that representing tenants on the DTES, we’ve worked to save one tenancy at a time, one eviction hearing at a time. In labour terms, ‘One job, one grievance.’ One person’s income, one person’s disability benefits appeal at a time. Over the years, my colleagues and I have won countless battles, but sometimes it feels to us like we’re losing the war.”
For Stephanie Smith, entering this campaign as a Green Party candidate for Council, she has come to feel a new sense of possibility, of optimism in places that she hasn’t felt it for a long time.
“This is a terrible moment in a lot of ways. The forces aligned against people seem so overwhelming, and there’s so much suffering. So many people in Vancouver feel like they’re on the bubble, they’re one eviction notice, one demoviction, one renoviction away from never being able to come back to the city.
That profound insecurity is destructive to people, destructive to community, and destructive to our city.
There are things we can do together, if we are bold, if we are thoughtful, and if we are collaborative, that will bring security and a sense of belonging, a sense that we’re going to be able to remain here and not be pushed out of the city by developers.”
Stephanie Smith assures VanRamblings that she will dedicate every waking moment as a Vancouver City Councillor to working towards creating housing in our city that is genuinely affordable housing for wage earners, for the working poor, for seniors and single parents, for all those who are in need, where no tenant or co-operative housing member would pay more than 30% of their income to be housed, and real tenant protections enacted.
Elect Stephanie Smith, a well-experienced, grassroots community activist and people’s advocate. You can make that happen, you must make that happen, by marking your ballot for Candidate #141 this upcoming Saturday, for the people’s advocate, Stephanie Smith — to help transform Vancouver into a city for all.
Arezo Zarrabian, NPA candidate for Vancouver City Council, in which Ms. Zarrabian blows the roof off the rafters at the Vancouver Police Department’s all-candidates forum! Watch. Listen. Cheer!
NPA Vancouver candidate Arezo Zarrabian, running for a seat on Vancouver City Council is, by far, the loveliest, the strongest, the best informed, the most articulate and the candidate with the most commanding presence that we’ve come across and become acquainted with during the 2022 Vancouver civic election season.
Everyone who’s heard Arezo Zarrabian has come away mightily impressed.
Just watch and listen to the video at the top of this portion of today’s VanRamblings column, where you’ll see Vancouver’s première crime data analyst, a decorated 13-year veteran of the Vancouver Police Department, where in the video she blows the roof off the rafters because she, and she alone, knows what’s going on in our city, was the first to identify that there are four random, unprovoked attacks occurring in our city, across every one of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods, on unsuspecting, innocent victims, each and every day.
As if the video above, featuring Arezo Zarrabian as she goes up against Mayor Kennedy Stewart and ABC Vancouver Mayoral candidate Ken Sim — where she calls them out for their hapless foolishness and divisiveness — is not astoundingly impressive enough — and we’re here to tell you that it’s damned impressive — when Arezo Zarrabian, a first generation Iranian-Canadian born citizen, spoke at the University Women’s Club of Vancouver all-women candidates Women Transforming Cities forum, as she began her address to the audience, she broke down as she spoke about Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody in the jails of Iran, has triggered continuing nationwide and worldwide protests calling for regime change in Iran. Recovering from her moving display of emotionally, Arezo Zarrabian gave, by far, the strongest, most well-received candidate speech of the evening, the only candidate to receive — in her case, alone — an extended standing applause.
If you’ve been saving yourself to vote on Election Day, this upcoming Saturday, October 15th, we strongly encourage — we beg you — to save a vote for Arezo Zarrabian, number 150 on your ballot. Quite simply, we in Vancouver need more persons of character and integrity, more informed decision-makers like heartbreakingly brilliant Arezo Zarrabian involved in the life of our city.
Believe us when we write: Arezo Zarrabian is a difference maker, from whom you will be hearing much in the months and years to come.
Saving the best for last, yes it’s the guy who makes you weep because he’s all heart, and wit and commitment, the Vancouver City Councillor who (along with his friend, and fellow member of Vancouver who is running for a second term on Council, Sarah Kirby-Yung) is a must-vote for Vancouver City Council.
Following the 2018 Vancouver civic election, in his first four-year term on Vancouver City Council, Pete Fry worked with constituents to resolve their problems with City Hall’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, while also dedicating his energies to resolving land use issues in order that the interests of Vancouver residents might best be protected. Renter protection, the provision of affordable housing, transparency and good governance, working to make Vancouver more resilient in the face of climate change, protecting our natural habitats, and supporting our vibrant arts, culture and small business communities, these were but a few of the issues that were addressed by Pete Fry in his first term on Vancouver City Council. Pete Fry is now asking for your support, to re-elect him to a 2nd term on Council.
VanRamblings say: hell yeah, VOTE FOR PETE FRY, the guy who’s on your side.
