Category Archives: Vancouver

VIFF 2018 | VanRamblings’ Annual Definitive VIFF Column

The Vancouver International Film Festival brings the world to Vancouver each autumn

37th Annual Vancouver International Film Festival
Thursday, September 27th thru Friday, October 12th

The 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is about to fall into place, taking over cinemas across Vancouver with 300 films representing 55 countries. Running from Sept. 27th thru Oct. 12th, VIFF is best approached like a multi-country overseas vacation: with pre-planning, and lots of it.

Here are some tips for your VIFF vacation.
What movies to choose?

2018 Vancouver International Film Festival: Contemporary World Cinema

On viff.org, you’ll find films organized by programme (e.g. Panorama, Gateway, Dragons & Tigers, B.C. Spotlight), by country of origin, by genre, or by director. See what intrigues you! Also, you’ll want to check to see which films have a guest attending (noted on each film’s individual online page), which might mean an interesting Q&A. Note should be made that the most accurate and up-to-date information about guests is online only.
You can also peruse the printed, glossy and absolutely stunningly beautiful VIFF Guide, available at Chapters & Indigo and other bookstores as well as at almost all libraries across our region, or at any one of the nine venues where films will be screened, as well as at coffee shops all across town.

VIFF 2018 venue, The Centre for the Performing Arts

As always, a number of VIFF films will be returning to theatres for regular runs post-festival, although it can be both fun and enlightening to see these films during VIFF, particularly if a guest director is presenting the film, and also because most of these snob appeal, certain future Oscar nominee “Special Presentations” will screen at the luxurious 1800-seat Centre for the Performing Arts, on Homer Street across from the Vancouver Public Library.
Here are a few of the films with post-VIFF distribution planned for VIFF 2018, with tentative release dates …

  • Can You Ever Forgive Me? (October 19th), director Marielle Heller’s charming melancholic comedy about real-life writer-turned-criminal Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy, a lock guarantee for a Best Actress Oscar nomination), who forged some 400 letters by dead celebrities and pawned them off until the FBI caught up with her scheme;

  • Boy Erased (November 2nd). A richly humanistic, emotionally searing drama that sticks in the memory, Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) stars as Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman, a lock for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, and Russell Crowe) at age 19, who send him to a a gay conversion therapy programme;
  • A Private War (November 16th). The story of the late journalist Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike), one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time, an utterly fearless and rebellious spirit, driven to the frontlines of conflicts across the globe to give voice to the voiceless;
  • The Front Runner (November 21st). The Closing Gala film, tracking the rise and fall of Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman, a lock for a Best Actor Oscar nomination), and the role tabloid journalism played in his downfall;
  • The Favourite (November 23rd). Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Nashawaty says about The Favourite, “a Satyricon-era Fellini-esque tragicomedy all hopped up with enough sex, deviance, hypocrisy, decadence, and spicy profanity to make your average Masterpiece Theatre patron reach into their PBS tote bag for some smelling salts.” And, oh yes, a lock guarantee for Best Picture, and a whack of actress nominations for Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, and Emma Stone.
  • Vox Lux (December 7th). Arriving on our shores directly from the Toronto Festival Festival, powered by a riveting performance of fiercely mannered bravado by Natalie Portman (a certain Best Actress nominee), Vox Lux paints a sharp, powerfully haunting and shellacked portrait of a ghost in the celebrity machine.
  • Destroyer (December 25th). A second VIFF 2018 film starring Nicole Kidman, director Karyn Kusama’s latest film follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman, in one of the best ever performances). The film also features spectacular work from Canadian actress, Tatiana Maslany

Award-Winning Must-See Films

2018 Vancouver International Film Festival Award Winning Films

Over the past month, VanRamblings has written about each of the following films in our extensive coverage of VIFF 2018; for insight & information on what films to see, we recommend you peruse our previous posts on this year’s celebrated, must-see films for the VIFF 2018 films we list below.
The VIFF 2018 films we write about below constitute the 14 Cinema of the World films VanRamblings is recommending that those attending the 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival give serious attention to when considering the purchase of tickets for this year’s film festivals, the films we believe are rock solid films that will both move you and change your world.
You may also want to check out Shane Scott Travis’ 25 Movies You Won’t Want to Miss at VIFF 2018 column on Taste of Cinema, as well as all of the coverage of VIFF 2018 in The Georgia Straight.

VIFF 2018 award-winning films recommended by VanRamblings

This year, the award-winning, must-see films arriving on our shores from places other than Hollywood, and set to unspool at VIFF include …

Screening at the 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival this year: acclaimed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest, Shoplifters, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, a quietly devastating portrait of family and theft in contemporary Japan, resonant, compassionate, socially conscious filmmaking with a piercing intelligence that is pure Kore-eda, and a film that stole the hearts of the Cannes jury and even the most cynical of film journalists attending Cannes this year, a film made up of delicate brushstrokes: details, moments, looks and smiles, a heartbreaker that draws our empathy, and yet another charming, funny and affecting example of Kore-eda’s very special brand of tough-but-tender humanism.

Another Cannes favourite headed to VIFF 2018, Capernaum, Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s politically-charged fable about a child who launches a lawsuit against his parents, a staggering heart-in-mouth social-realist blockbuster teeming with sorrow, yet strewn with diamond-shards of beauty, wit and hope, at once quietly absorbing and fitfully shocking as we experience the sights, sounds and smells of the streets where a one-year-old child can wander around alone without anyone stopping to wonder why, and a film that while choosing dramatic power over narrative finesse makes a powerful statement on human misery and grotesque inequality while tackling its subject with intelligence, heart and furious compassion.

Another acclaimed film set to arrive at VIFF 2018, the much-looked-forward-to Cannes FIPRESCI Prize winner, South Korean director LEE Changdong’s Burning, starring Hollywood actor Steven Yuen (Okja, The Walking Dead). Here’s what Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang had to say about Burning

At 2½ hours, Burning is a character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller. To reveal more would ruin the story’s slow-building pleasures, which are less about the haunting final destination than the subtle, razor-sharp microcurrents of class rage, family-inherited pain, everyday ennui and youthful despair that build in scene after scene, even when nothing more seems to be happening than a simple or not-so-simple conversation.

Defying expectations throughout, offering multiple, murky solutions to a set of mysteries wondrous in their complexity and inscrutability, Burning, with its jazzy score, gorgeously immaculate camerawork, shifting moods and carefully calibrated minimalism emerges as a genre-bending murder-mystery that torches genre clichés, in one of the most scorching and beautifully unforgettable films of the year. Yet another VIFF 2018 must-see.

The 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival Panorama Programme

The Panorama programme spans four series: Contemporary World Cinema, Spotlight on France, Vanguard, and new this year, Focus on Italy.
Panorama films arrive on our shores to much critical acclaim and near rabid VIFF patron interest, so if you see a film you like, you should book your tickets for those films now, including: Jafar Panahi’s latest, 3 Faces (which is currently taking TIFF by storm); and Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro, the winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes.
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There are, of course, more than 100 films from across the globe in the Contemporary World Cinema series, including The Wild Pear Tree, the latest film from Master Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2014 Cannes Palme d’Or winner for Winter Sleep); the well-reviewed new film from German director Christian Petzold, Transit; Berlin Best Actor winner Anthony Bajon in The Prayer; and pushing the boundaries of cinema, Holiday, Swedish-born director Isabella Eklöf’s viciously auspicious low-temperature, high-impact début, a sun-splashed dark tableau about a frost-bitten summer vacation gone awry.

Each of the films named above are linked to the VIFF online page, allowing you to easily purchase tickets for one of the film’s upcoming screenings.

37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival Spotlight on France programme

There are only nine films in the popular Spotlight on France series this year, each exceptional and each film exploring the rich cinematic culture that continues to flourish in France, a rare opportunity for habitués of the Lower Mainland to screen this year’s finest Gallic delights from l’Hexagone.

For instance, there’s Shéhérazade, proving that VIFF films are not only for the blue rinse and grey-haired crowd. Winner of the Prix Jean Vigo for France’s best first feature of the past year, Jean-Bernard Marlin’s slice-of-life drama about young love on the mean streets of Marseille harkens back to Italian neorealism in its use of non-professional actors and gritty locations. Kenza Fortas, as the tough teen prostitute Shéhérazade, is a real find. A native Marseillais, Marlin has crafted “an ultra-realist portrait of juvenile delinquency … and a surprising and engaging love story to boot.”

37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival Focus on Italy programme

Eight films from Italy, long renowned for the world’s most groundbreaking cinema, comprises the first ever VIFF Focus on Italy series, including Daughter of Mine (pictured above), about which the VIFF 2018 programme guide records …

On sun-drenched Sardinia, ten-year-old Vittoria (Sara Casu), born of alcoholic party girl Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher) but raised as her own by sensible Tina (Valeria Golino), is drawn into her birth mother’s chaotic sphere, despite having no knowledge of the truth of her situation. Says Jessica Kiang in Variety “Laura Bispuri’s sunswept, emotive, and elemental sophomore narrative film… a noble rarity… unfolds with such a barefoot sense of place that you can almost feel the Sardinian sand between your unwashed toes.”
Oscar award-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest drama, Everybody Knows, opened Cannes this year to much acclaim, uniting lovers and longtime married couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in a suspenseful kidnapping thriller set in Spain that will have you on the edge of your seat throughout, in the most gripping and propulsive popcorn-chomping genre film of the year, sociological cinema that explores the meaning of love, bitter resentment, societal divisions, class and the secrets that bind us together and pull us apart. Gosh, sounds just like our current Vancouver civic election — and probably just as compelling, too. Let’s face it, here’s a film not to be missed at VIFF 2018 — hey, it’s Asghar Farhadi … who misses an Asghar Farhadi film? Everybody Knows screens only once at VIFF, Friday, September 28th, 9pm at The Centre for the Performing Arts.

Cold War. A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatally mismatched, set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, Pawel Pawlikowski not only won Best Director at Cannes this year, Cold War has emerged as the odds-on favourite to pick up the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year (Pawlikowski’s film Ida won that very same award back in 2013). Says Time Out film critic Phil de Semlyen …

The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.

Accessible, humane, compassionate, epic, dreamlike, bittersweet and unbearably lovely, tell me, are you really planning on missing Cold War? No, I didn’t think so. Lucky us, Cold War screens twice at The Centre for the Performing Arts, on Tuesday, October 2nd at 6:30pm, and Wednesday, October 10th at 6:15pm. See ya there.


Here are two more VIFF 2018 films VanRamblings heartily recommends …

Ash is the Purest White, part of the Vancouver International Film Festival's Dragons & Tigers series

Director Jia Jia Zhang-ke’s Ash is the Purest White took Cannes by storm this year, a fierce, gripping, heartbreaking film that VanRamblings wholheartedly recommends.


And let us not forget the master of Asian cinema, Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou), who this year brings Shadow, as rousing and beautifully rendered a film as you’ll see at VIFF this year, and a stunning epic re-imagining of the Wuxia third century Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history.

VIFF 2018 documentary films

Reviews have also been spectacular for ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch, and late documentarian Rob Stewart’s final film (he died in a tragic diving accident during filming), Sharkwater Extinction.


How and where do I buy tickets?

2018 Vancouver International Film Festival tickets and passes

The easiest way to purchase tickets is to go online to viff.org. Just put the name of the film you’re interested in into the search engine (top right), and click on Buy when you reach the film’s online webpage — from there it’s easy, allowing you to print your tickets at home.
Or, you can call the Festival Infoline at 604-683-3456 from noon til 6 p.m. daily through October 12th. (Online is quicker.) Note that there is a service charge for online and phone orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $4 per order.
Note. Required by the provincial government (because VIFF films screen unrated) you’ll need to purchase a one-time $2 VIFF membership.
Tickets can be purchased at the venues during operating hours. As of September 28th, all festival venues — The Vancity Theatre on Seymour just north of Davie Street; The Centre for Performing Arts, on Homer Street directly across from the Vancouver Public Library; The Cinematheque on Howe Street just north of Davie; SFU Goldcorp Theatre, at Abbott and Hastings; Cineplex International Village, at Pender and Abbott; and The Playhouse Theatre, across from the old Post Office — will have a box office open daily, one hour before the day’s first screening.
What about ticket packages or passes?
A Student or Senior 5-ticket pack goes for $60.
If you’re planning to go to a few films, for regular filmgoers the Festival Six-Pack is a good deal: six tickets for $85, compared to individual ticket prices of $13 – $17.
The best deal? A $160 Weekday Matineé pass, which will allow you to see all of the films you can get to between 10am and 5:55pm Monday to Friday, which if you play your cards right oughta allow you to see up to 75 films, and near double that if you choose to attend VIFF programmer Sandy Gow’s always spectacular & moving International Shorts film programmes.
The regular Senior and Student Pass goes for $330, while the full Festival Patron Pass is available for $420.
What about all those lines outside the theatres?

2015 Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancity Theatre lineup

Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks; you know who you are), a ticket-holders line (for those with tickets in hand) and a rush line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime, at full price (cash preferred).
No matter which line you’re in, arriving at least 30 minutes early (arriving an hour early is better) is a good idea, particularly if you’re picky about where you sit. (Seating is not guaranteed, even if you have a ticket or a pass, if you arrive less than 20 minutes before showtime.)
What about food and drink?
Though most VIFF venues serve the usual popcorn / candy / soft-drink fare, some have a few extras (there’s beer and wine at The Rio, and wine at the Vancity, for example). Not to worry, there are a wealth of restaurants just steps from the door from most venues. Outside food and drink is officially not allowed in the theatres, but VIFF-goers have been known to get away with it; be discreet, considerate and tidy.
What about bus routes and parking?

A Vancouver Coast Mountain Translink bus headed to the Vancouver International Film Festival

Translink / Coast Mountain buses are the best way to get downtown, where most of the venues are located. Once downtown, most of the venues are within walking distance of one another. Or, if you’re planning on seeing a film at The Rio, Skytrain will whisk you there in no time flat. There’s parking at Cineplex International Village, but you’re going to want to check in with Festival staff (they’ll be wearing bright yellow VIFF t-shirts) to register your vehicle.
What about crowds?
There will be crowds, particularly at the better-known films; not a lot you can do about that. Chances are that you’ll meet some thoughtful person or people in line; it happens often. Weekday screenings generally have shorter lines, particularly for the less well-known films.

2018 Vancouver International Film Festival

All and all, quite simply, there is just no better time that can be had at any time of the year than through attending Vancouver’s international film festival, the most humanizing, eye-opening film event of the year, providing both a sympathetic & empathetic window on our too often troubled world.
As VanRamblings has written previously, while VIFF explores the Cinema of Despair, it also presents the festival-goer with the Cinema of Hope.
Over the course of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s 16 days, your world will be rocked — and, by festival’s end, you’ll emerge a changed, and a better person for the experience. Where else could that happen, at what other première arts event during the course of the year could that occur than at the Vancouver International Film Festival, where you’ll meet new friends, engage in a collective and humanizing endeavour that will provide insight into how lives are lived in every country and every region across our globe, and help you to realize and remember, as well, that we’re all in this together, we all seek love and connection, we all cherish family, and in the best of all possible worlds, we all seek understanding, and if we are very, very lucky, by film festival’s end, together we will have successfully fought the pervasive sense of anomie that has had us in its grip arising from the rise of the politics of fear and division currently extant in our world and even in our own country.
Through attendance at our 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival’s, the possibility exists that we may achieve the realization of the spirit of collective transcendence, and hope for a better future for all of us through activism — which by film festival’s end means you should get out to vote for the candidates who mean to bring about change for the better.
Happy VIFF’ing, and happy voting in our current municipal election. See you at the movies, and at the election polls! Change for the better is near!

Vancouver Votes 2018 | COPE Fundraiser Today at The Rio Theatre

Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical | COPE 2018 Fundraiser | Rio Theatre, 7pm, Saturday, September 22nd

This afternoon at 2pm, COPE: The Coalition of Progressive Electors present a special screening of the widely-acclaimed, award-winning documentary by Teresa Alfeld, Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical, as least in part as former City Councillor Tim Louis wrote in a Facebook post yesterday to …

” … celebrate the progressive socialist history of Vancouver City Hall, as championed by Harry Rankin, the most popular civic politician in Vancouver history, the most outspoken political figure in our city’s history, a man who inspired a whole new generation of socialists and activists, including the candidates running with COPE in the 2018 Vancouver civic election.”

Prior to the matinée screening of Harry Rankin: Legacy of a Radical, after the doors of the Rio Theatre open at 1pm, you’ll have an opportunity to interact with COPE’s 2018 candidates for civic office …

  • City Council candidates, Order of Canada recipient and respected anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson (one of the warmest, friendliest people you’d ever want to meet — and you do want to meet Jean, and speak with her, as one of our city’s great listeners and community activists); beloved former COPE School Board trustee and Vancouver City Councillor, Anne Roberts, who will emerge as the ‘can do, get things done’ social conscience of our next City Council; and Derrick O’Keefe, our very own Kshama Sawant, Ben Isitt, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and John Sewell, all wrapped up into the soon-to-be City Councillor, who will become the most beloved political figure in our city and our province when he is elected to Vancouver City Council on Saturday, October 20th;

  • School Board trustee candidates Diana Day and Barb Parrott, who don’t view themselves as caretakers of a public education system in Vancouver that, for years, has suffered and continues to suffer economic distress, the two activist School Board candidates in this civic election who will be on the side of children enrolled in our city’s school system, and who will fight for more and better in Vancouver, including the restoration of the band & strings programme, who will fight for better educational outcomes for our indigenous students, more English as Second Language & French Immersion teachers, and more speech pathologists & support staff to meet the needs of Vancouver’s special needs students;
  • Park Board candidates, Gwen Giesbrecht and Dr. John Irwin, two of the finest people you’d ever want to meet, longtime advocates for Vancouver’s beleaguered, and woefully underfunded, parks and recreation system, who will fight against a 12-foot-wide asphalt bike path through Kitsilano Beach, and the construction of a destination Olympic pool and hockey rink that would take over the entirety of Kitsilano’s Connaught Park, while shutting down the existing Kitsilano Community Centre and hockey rink, who recognize maintenance, growth and proper funding of our parks and recreation system represents a class issue for many, many families for whom our parks are their back yard, and for whom our community centres are a second home.

Following the screening of the film, a panel discussion will be held from 3:30pm til til 4pm, with panelists and attendees provided with a second opportunity from 4pm til 4:45pm to formally (and informally) meet, interact and question COPE’s candidates for office, and where candidates want to hear what your priorities issues are in the 2018 Vancouver civic election.
The Rio Theatre, southwest corner of Commercial Drive and East Broadway, doors open at 1pm, screening at 2pm, a chance to get out of the rain, and where a good time is guaranteed for all amidst some of the finest people our city has ever produced. Tickets are $10 in advance, or $12 at the door.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Must-Elect Council Candidates Emerge

On Thursday evening, September 20th, the Kerrisdale Community Centre hosted an all-candidates meeting for 20 of the City Council candidates who are seeking office & tenure at City Hall in the 2018 Vancouver civic election.
Unlike the Council all-candidates forum hosted by the Residents for Community Control — where almost all members of the audience were associated with candidates speaking at the front of the hall — the audience for the Kerrisdale Community Centre forum was 80% local residents, who arrived at 7pm on a dark and inclement Thursday evening not to get out of the rain, but to listen to candidates with whom they were unfamiliar, their community attendance an information seeking venture.
One similarity between the two Council all-candidate events: there were no panelists present from the governing Vision Vancouver party, nor for the second night in a row were there any panelists from Hector Bremner’s nascent and seemingly invisible Yes Vancouver civic party.
On this surprisingly vibrant and engaging Thursday evening, there were no panelists from the Coalition Party, either, although Coalition Party Mayoral candidate Wai Young and her Council candidate colleague, Glen Chernen were present, and standing at the back of the auditorium — both of whom who told this reporter that contact had been made by their civic party with the Kerrisdale Community Centre forum organizers requesting participation in the night’s event. But to no good effect, it would appear.

Kerrisdale Community Centre City Council All-Candidates Forum, September 20, 2018

For the second night in a row, the two most effective and well-received candidate speakers of the evening were the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association‘s generational candidate, Sarah Kirby-Yung, and the Green Party’s phenomenally lucid Pete Fry, although OneCity Vancouver City Council candidate Christine Boyle gave them both a run for their money, and in the humanity and connection sweepstakes had all other speakers beat hands down — which is what you might reasonably expect of a once-in-a-lifetime civic political candidate, destined to become the most beloved political figure in Vancouver’s long, gloried and celebrated civic history.
Vancouver Non-Partisan Association Council candidate Melissa De Genova was her regular charmingly feisty self, while her NPA colleague Colleen Hardwick got better as the evening went on — but please, if there’s a god in the heavens, make her stop talking about her family’s history in civic politics and focus on what she would bring to the Council table — which she finally managed to achieve by meeting’s end. So there is a god, after all.
The Green Party’s Michael Wiebe — who we’re now moving into the must-elect column — emerged as the most dynamic speaker of the evening, his command of & his focused ability to speak to the issues both unparalleled on this particular evening and in the election generally — his current Park Board Commissioner colleague, Sarah Kirby Yung, has done a fine job of mentoring Mr. Wiebe, the two getting along like a house on fire, Michael Wiebe’s respect for Ms. Kirby-Yung palpable and endearing, she providing the voice of reason and experience to Mr. Wiebe’s focused youthful vitality.
In a Vancouver civic election where 71 candidates have come forward seeking office as a City Councillor, Thursday evening was more a look-see evening than an event designed to address the issues of the day — because, let’s face it, there’s only one issue in this election: affordable housing and co-and-co-op housing within the rubric of neighbourhood consultation, with the recognition that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis in Vancouver, and we don’t want more study (consultation, yes; study, no), we want action, and we want action now, not in some distant future.

Michael Wiebe, Green Party of Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, and 2018 City Council aspirant

Five candidates — each of whom you can see and hear speaking in the video at the top of today’s column — emerged on this electoral evening as the candidates capable of getting things done, and getting ’em done now …

  • OneCity Vancouver’s transcendently lovely and transformationally inspiring Christine Boyle (just wait til she’s elected … your socks are going to be impressed right off, we’ve never seen anyone like her in Vancouver municipal politics, and that’s all to the good for us);

  • Pete Fry, the city builder extraordinaire in this election, the must, must, must-elect in 2018, and a man possessed of much wisdom, knowledge, and unending kindness, the candidate you can count on every day;
  • Anne Roberts, the voice of reason and the voice of experience, who’s been elected to civic office before, which means that she knows how to get things done for us, much sooner, and the Councillor who will emerge as the quietly effective social conscience of the next Council;
  • Independent City City Council candidate, and the democrat in the Council group, Erin Shum — which means not only that Erin Shum will be the Councillor who will listen to you, but act on your concerns, who will never back down; don’t be fooled by her youth, Erin Shum is an old soul;

    and right-out-of-left field

  • Michael Wiebe — a current Park Board Commissioner, who has served well and with distinction for four years now — who, when you watch the video above (you can see and hear Michael Wiebe at the 11:20 mark in the video) you’ll find yourself saying out loud, “I want this young Kennedy-esque man on Vancouver’s next City Council, and I’ll be telling all my neighbours, friends and colleagues about him, too. Now where do I go about donating money and volunteer hours to his campaign?”

So there you have it: the 2018 Vancouver civic election is coming into clearer focus, with City Council candidates emerging from the primordial muck to carry us to the Promised Land, and a better, fairer, more just and transformative future, where the needs of everyone can and will be met.

2018 Vancouver Civic Election, My City My Vote. October 20 2018.

The next awe-inspiring all-candidates event: S.U.C.C.E.S.S and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Sunday afternoon, September 23rd Vancouver Mayoral debate, which will take place in Chinatown, at 28 West Pender.

Mayoral Pre-Election Townhall, 28 W. Pender, 2pm, Sunday, September 23rd

Vancouver Votes 2018 | A Reflection on City Council & Mayor

On Wednesday evening, the Residents for Community Control held the first City Council all-candidates forum of the 2018 Vancouver civic election.
Two hundred hardy souls came in out of the rain to listen to and question City Council candidates from most of Vancouver’s civic parties.
We write most, because two of Vancouver’s mainstream municipal parties were unrepresented at Wednesday night’s forum: the Vision Vancouver ruling party, despite a half dozen pleading contacts with representatives of Vancouver’s governing party — who failed to respond to any of the organizer’s entreaties, for any one of their half dozen Council candidates — and OneCity Vancouver, who apologized to organizers (and attendees) for their non-attendance, as OneCity Vancouver candidates Christine Boyle and Brandon Yan — two of the must-elects in the current civic election — found themselves at the well-attended SFU Harbour Centre Broadbent Institute-sponsored Bringing Racial Justice to Local Democracy forum.
The Green Party of Vancouver was well-represented, with three of their serious-minded candidates for Council in attendance: incumbent Adriane Carr, Michael Wiebe and must-elect Pete Fry. The Vancouver Non-Partisan Association’s Colleen Hardwick and must-elect Sarah Kirby-Yung did their party proud, as did must-elect COPE Council candidate, Anne Roberts.
Otherwise, the also-ran right-wing parties were in attendance: Jesse Johl for Vancouver First; Raza Mirza for Pro Vancouver; James Lin for Coalition Vancouver — but, as it happened, no Council rep from Yes Vancouver.
The questions that you might expect to come up were featured front and centre: affordable housing, those damnable bike lanes (alas), development and which parties were in the developers’ pockets, parks and recreation and adequate funding for public facilities, the Downtown Eastside (but not homelessness), reining in City Hall’s budget or at least prioritizing expenditures differently than has been the case with Vision Vancouver, and the need for a new city plan for each of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods.
In 2014, the Mount Pleasant Council all-candidates forum, held at Heritage Hall at 15th and Main, was the most raucous and engaged all-candidate debate of the entire 2014 Vancouver election season. In stark contrast, Wednesday night’s well-attended City Council all-candidates forum was muted in comparison: too many representatives from too many civic parties, with too many utterly unknown Council candidates participating, with only one City Council incumbent in attendance — the Green Party’s beloved communicator and City Councillor extraordinaire, Adriane Carr.
By forum’s end four things were clear: forum attendees possessed a universal visceral hatred for Vision Vancouver; the Green Party in all its humility, good cheer, humanity and intelligence is absolutely and utterly beloved, at least by those in attendance and more probably by a broad spectrum of potential Vancouver votes; the Green Party’s Pete Fry and the NPA’s Sarah Kirby-Yung — two of the must-elects in this election — were by far the best speakers of the evening, the best informed with a broad grasp of the issues, and the most well-received of all the candidates at the front of the room (the Greens’ Adriane Carr & Michael Wiebe arrived a bit late — important civic business, given that both are current electeds in civic governance — and chose to remain as a part of the audience); and voters are hankering for change, and not more of the same old, same old.

Kennedy Stewart formally endorsed by OneCity Vancouver as their choice for Mayor

Looking like the cat that ate the canary, independent Mayoral aspirant Kennedy Stewart on Wednesday morning — despite VanRamblings formally endorsing independent Shauna Sylvester for Mayor — was formally endorsed by the members and the Board of OneCity Vancouver as their ‘certain-to-be-elected‘ (they feel), and ‘someone they want to work with and have confidence in’, Mayoral candidate of choice.
For the record, OneCity Vancouver is, by far, VanRamblings’ favourite feminist, woman-driven civic party, the only party with a consistent & well-thought-out political analysis in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election. Now, we’re not saying that we don’t think Shauna Sylvester wouldn’t make a first-rate Mayor for Vancouver — we believe that with all our heart, and to the depth of our being — rather, we’re saying that Alison Atkinson, Anna Chudnovksy, Cara Ng, Kyla Epstein, Mia Edbrooke, Marcy Toms, Adi Pick, Claudia Ferris, Helesia Luke, Abby Leung, Joey Hartman, Sharon Yandle, Thea Dowler, Jennifer Reddy, Carrie Bercic, Erica Jaaf, Christine Boyle and a host of other change-making, action-oriented, difference-maker women of conscience may, just may mind you (and, most likely do), know more than that VanRamblings fella who writes these posts on this blog, and that in choosing Kennedy Stewart as OneCity Vancouver’s Mayoralty candidate of choice, these fine women are smart political cookies, and probably (okay, certainly) much smarter than the writer of this blog.
And wouldn’t you know, no sooner do the good folks involved with OneCity Vancouver formally endorse Kennedy Stewart as their Mayoralty candidate of choice, than the Vancouver Sun publishes a story that reads …

Independent candidate Kennedy Stewart is pulling ahead in the race for Vancouver’s top job after Ian Campbell’s departure, according to the latest poll.

The Research Co. found that 36 per cent of respondents say they will vote for Stewart in next month’s election, up 11 points since the company’s last poll in July. The poll shows Stewart with an 11-point lead over the NPA’s Ken Sim, who is in second place at 25 per cent.

Among female voters, Stewart holds a 23-point lead over Sim, while Sim is slightly ahead of Stewart (32 per cent to 29 per cent) among decided male voters. Sim is followed by independent candidate Shauna Sylvester with 17 per cent, Hector Bremner of Yes Vancouver at seven per cent, and David Chen of ProVancouver with four per cent support.

Word on the street is that Kennedy Stewart was unwilling to give up his cushy $168,000-a-year job as a Member of Parliament, unless he could secure both the support of labour, and the provincial NDP.
And since OneCity Vancouver is pretty much the civic farm team for the provincial NDP — again, for the record, as a life long member of the New Democratic Party, VanRamblings loves the provincial NDP, and just about every galldarn, cotton pickin’ one of the party’s provincial and federal members — so OneCity Vancouver‘s affiliation, affection and support for the New Democratic Party is just darn fine by us.
We’re sure that the terrifically intelligent folks in OneCity Vancouver are well-aware that every Union local in Vancouver, and every one of the 50,000+ Union members who reside in the city of Vancouver and call our paradise by the sea home, are working their buns off volunteering for Kennedy Stewart, and the candidates endorsed by the Vancouver & District Labour Council (hey, we’re also a life long Union member and an anarcho-syndicalist, so the support of labour for political candidates of conscience, that’s just fine — more than fine, if we’re being truthful — by us, too).
And we’re pretty darn sure that folks associated with every one of the New Democratic Party Vancouver constituencies are working overtime volunteering — on their own time, on their own dime — for Kennedy Stewart (well, at least the ones that are not over-the-moon for Shauna Sylvester, among which number VanRamblings must count ourself) and all the VDLC-endorsed candidates for OneCity Vancouver, the Green Party of Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors, and a few of the Vision Vancouver candidates, too. It’s a party — a party of the socially conscious.
If the OneCity Vancouver must-elect candidates, each one of whom VanRamblings is head-over-heels in love with — Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle for City Council, and Carrie Bercic, Erica Jaaf and and the downright spectacular Jennifer Reddy for School Board — can ride into office on Kennedy Stewart’s coattails, well that seems like a pretty darn good thing.
Just wait til Christine, Brandon, Erica, Carrie and Jennifer are all elected to office come the evening of Saturday, October 20th — you’ll become as smitten with each one of them as everyone who knows them has, and is.
Imagine. Being in love with the people you’ve elected.
Elect OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, Brandon Yan, Erica Jaaf, Carrie Bercic & Jennifer Reddy, and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to you!

2018 Vancouver civic election

And, finally, for today’s VanRamblings post, first this … for the folks who are anxious to get to the advance polls to cast their progressively-minded Council ballot of conscience for the transcendently lovely Christine Boyle, Brandon Yan, Anne Roberts, Jean Swanson, Derrick O’Keefe, Pete Fry, Michael Wiebe, Adriane Carr, Catherine Evans and Heather Deal, and their School Board ballot of conscience for Erica Jaaf, Carrie Bercic, Jennifer Reddy, Erin Arnold, Aaron Leung, the extraordinary Allan Wong, Diana Day and Barb Parrot and Janet Fraser, and their all-important Park Board ballot of conscience for Stuart Mackinnon, Gwen Giesbrecht, John Irwin, Camil Dumont, Dave Demers, Shamin Shivji and Cameron Zubko …

2018 Vancouver civic election Advance Voter Information Card

And then this, where VanRamblings hopes to see you tonight (we’re going to try to remember to bring along our tripod, which’ll make for less shaky video … and yes, we’ll be the annoying guy “filming”) …

Kerrisdale Community Centre All-Candidates Forum, September 20, 2018