Photo | Courtesy of Vancouver City Councillor Lisa Dominato’s (bottom left) Twitter feed. Pictured, our newly-inaugurated and outstanding Mayor and Vancouver City Councillors.
Monday evening, VanRamblings was afforded the opportunity to speak with Vancouver City Councillor Rebecca Bligh at the inaugural for the newly-elected Commissioners on Vancouver Park Board, Ms. Bligh the calmest and most zen presence we’ve experienced in the past year & a half of our life.
During the course of our very pleasant conversation, VanRamblings congratulated Councillor Bligh on her recent appointment as the newly-elected Council delegate to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), an important post working with other Canadian municipal governments in determining policy on urban and rural development in municipalities across Canada, the FCM an advocacy organization comprised of civic delegates who work together on issues critical to all Canadians and the life our cities, towns and villages, and of our nation, on issues ranging from affordable housing, public infrastructure, transit, international trade and co-operation, immigration and refugee settlement, to emergency preparedness, clean water and climate change and resiliency, and more.
Councillor Bligh — as we say, a beatific presence — told us how much she was looking forward to collegial work with Mayor Kennedy Stewart and her fellow, newly-elected contingent of very bright, accomplished and well-versed City Councillors, and her upcoming work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In respect of the latter, Councillor Bligh indicated to us that she would transition consult with her predecessor on the FCM, retired City Councillor Raymond Louie, a recent Federation President.
Some years ago, when new members were elected to Vancouver City Council, the newly-elected Councillors were subject to an intensive two-day orientation. When Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to Vancouver City Council in 2014, she was subject to a two-week orientation. In 2018, our Mayor and eight newly-elected Councillors, and two incumbents will participate in a full 30-day orientation, set to end on Friday, December 7th.
The expanded orientation, conducted by city staff, is designed to apprise the incoming Mayor and 10 newly-elected City Councillors on all the motions passed by the most recent City Council, all the issues that came before that Council and previous Councils, and all of the issues that are due to come before Council in the coming months, ranging from the work of the Community Land Trust to the North-East False Creek Development Plan, and much more. By the time the orientation is complete, Mayor Kennedy Stewart and our 10 City Councillors will find themselves completely apprised, enabling them to hit the ground running in the new year.
From the beginning of the day Monday thru Friday, until day’s end after they’ve put their reading for the next day on their bedside nightstand, our Mayor and City Councillors will find themselves both busy and engaged, the information with which they’ll be presented the gift of a lifetime.
You’ll notice that the headline to today’s column reads: Missing Persons | City Councillors Go Into Hiding. Around these parts, we call that hypberbole, VanRamblings’ stock in trade.
Often, VanRamblings’ headlines and some of what we write are meant as a clever (sometimes too clever by half, it would seem of late, given the feedback we’ve been receiving) means of grabbing readers’ attention. Clearly, our Mayor and newly-elected City Councillors will be neither missing, nor be deemed to be in hiding — our benign intention was simply to point out that our newly-electeds will be busy over the course of the next month, and largely unavailable to the public as each is oriented to Vancouver City Hall, and the exigencies & responsibilities of their new jobs.
The other day, in respect of the responsibilities that Councillor Boyle had been assigned by Mayor Kennedy, we wrote …
” … this upcoming April, the sure-to-be-weary Councillor Boyle will sit in the Mayor’s chair as Deputy Mayor — she’ll likely ask her husband to bring their young son to Council Chambers to see his mom when she’s Chairing a Council meeting. Of course, by April, Councillor Boyle will have proved so busy with all of her various appointments, committee work, and work on Council that her son may not recognize her in the fourth month of next year, for wont of her involvement in his life.”
The above is an example of hypberbole, exaggeration for effect, a means for us to not only report that Councillor Boyle is bound to be busy in the coming months, but to point out that it must become necessary to all of our City Councillors to find some life balance given their newfound, awe-inspiring, and time and psychologically consuming elected responsibilities.
Clearly, Councillor Christine Boyle loves her children and her husband, her friends, her extended family and her fellow activists — of that, there should be no doubt in any one’s mind. Now, Councillor Boyle has not expressed concern to us for writing what we did above about her son not being able to recognize her — the suggestion, she knows, on its face is quite ludicrous.
Still, we feel it necessary to “explain ourselves” not because we have to, not because Councillor Boyle or any other person has suggested such to us, but because we wish to clarify to all VanRamblings’ readers, we live and are informed by the Hippocratic oath, “Do no harm.” We mean no harm, ever.
And, yes, our 2018 apology tour will be ending soon, and no, we’re not going to cease using hyperbole — going forward, when we employ hyperbole it will be for good only. It’s sorta like VanRamblings (aka Raymond Neil Tomlin) employing the third person in our writing — it’s meant to create a sense of ironic distance, no matter how serious our intent and perhaps, too, to enhance the entertainment value in what we write. I mean, who wants to read dry academic, rhetorical text? Not me!
VanRamblings wishes you, all of our newly-electeds and all of us who share a tiny bit of this paradise by the sea we call home, well, much joy & good.
Note to Councillors: Unless You Say It’s Off the Record, It’s …
Retired Vancouver City Councillor George Affleck, smiling, cuz he’s no longer on Council!
Do you recall in the summer of 2017, approximately eight days after Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director late one night called The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza and engaged in a frank, late night, profanity-ridden rant with Mr. Lizza? And do you recall that Mr. Lizza reported out on that conversation, and only 10 days into his White House tenure, Mr. Scaramucci was forced to resign (soon after which, his wife left him and filed for divorce)? Yeah, that intemperate Anthony Scaramucci.
Some years ago, soon after being elected to Council in 2011, VanRamblings found ourselves engaged in an in-depth, inside baseball conversation with Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor George Affleck.
About 30 seconds into the conversation, Councillor Affleck said, “Stop. I want to make it plain, Raymond, that whatever is said in this conversation is off the record. Going forward, unless I have given you express permission to report out on something I’ve said, all future conversations we might have should always be deemed by you to be off the record. If you agree to my condition, we can continue this conversation.”
I agreed, and we did.
If the dozens of “interview subjects” with whom I have engaged over the past 50 years had set a similar condition, their lives would probably have proved a great deal more pleasant and rewarding.
Over the years, I have broken more stories based on conversations with people who knew that I was a reporter / journalist, and who should have known as well that our conversation was on the record, unless otherwise stipulated. They failed to recognize such, and in consequence, their lives changed, and in consequence injustice was addressed & change wrought.
Our new City Councillors, many unsophisticated in the ways of journalism as she is practiced in Vancouver and elsewhere, and forthcoming as each might wish to be, must also consider the import of their words and ask themselves, “Would I like what I’m saying to Mike blasted across the front page of a local newspaper, or become the lead item on the evening news?”
In most instances, reporters try to protect their sources, often protecting them from themselves (here, I think of one elected in particular). Part of the 30-day orientation will most assuredly address relations between electeds and the media. The new Mayor and Council will have to develop a relationship with the media that is somewhat, if not a great deal, more transparent than the previous administration, whose 43-member Communications Department acted as a barrier to communications, frustrating the hell out of the media (it’s sorta like every Human Resources Department I’ve ever engaged with in my adult life, which department might better have been called Inhuman Resources).
A word to the wise for our Councillors: protect yourself in the clinches, be trusting, but wary, be open but place what you’re saying into context.
