Baseball | A Respite from the Madness

June 21, 2018Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Vancouver Canadians baseball at Nat Bailey Stadium

We are in the midst of grave times of momentous import, and mad times.

In our daily lives, from the time we rise at the beginning of our day, we all step up to the metaphoric ‘home-plate’. We go to our jobs, enjoy our families, and go about our daily lives. We hang in there. We press forward.From our metaphoric use of baseball as our game, to the quintessentially Canadian food we eat at the stadium, baseball resonates deep within us. Pop culture extends and illuminates it in every far corner of our society. I grew up watching baseball, and playing it — baseball is deeply rooted within me, and on some days, good days, game days, baseball serves to act as respite from all the madness and hurt and pain that surrounds me.

Baseball: it’s not just metaphoric idioms, nor is it the crowds at Nat Bailey Stadium — although they are fine and full of good cheer, the families and the young couples filled with love that brims over with hope — nor is it the popcorn, the warm peanuts in the shell & hotdogs, the crack of the bat, the wave, the hot summer days with cold beer and upside down ice-cream helmet cups. It runs deeper. Baseball symbolizes a way of life and, for many of us, has come to act as metaphor for the human condition.

Sometimes, when I walk down the street, people drift by me in a trance-like, almost catatonic, state plugged into the broader digital collective, and oblivious to most things going on around them. There is a near-constant stream of communication fed into our brains via our smartphones and tablets, and the opiate epidemic of our time: information overload. You just can’t escape it, none of us can escape it. Because now, it’s a way of life.

And then you set about to attend a Vancouver Canadians baseball game at Nat Bailey, and upon arrival at the stadium and having taken your seat, you hear someone near you marveling over a ball that was just hit deep into the outfield, and how it bounced off the wall, and ricocheted away from the left fielder. And for just a moment you are transported, life is transcended.

‘Filmed’ with an iPhone, the camera work a bit shaky. Vancouver Canadians baseball.

And sitting back on the uncomfortable benches, you take a moment to gaze upon the perfectly manicured, cross-hatched, green grass on the field reflecting the sunlight. And the shadows from the stadium’s upper façade slowly overtaking the rest of the diamond from earlier innings. You see the Canadians pitcher’s pre-pitch routine unfolding, as he nervously spins the ball in his hand, adjusts the brim of his cap so it sits just off to the left of his head. And for one very special moment, there is a hush in the crowd.

Then the gangly young batter comes up to the plate, some 19-year-old kid from Texas with dreams of “the show”, setting about to rap the bat against his cleats to shake loose the dirt stuck in the heel. Stepping up to the plate, he looks directly at the pitcher as if to say, “Give me your best. I can take it, and knock the ball clear out of the stadium, into tomorrow and beyond.

For many of us, baseball offers us refuge from the madness of our times, because it’s antithetical to the way much of life is today, antithetical to the never-ending flood of rage that we have come to accept as the new normal.

During a baseball game there’s no Trump, no surtax protesting rich folks, no developers, no rank unfairness, no despair, no railing against social injustice, hurt, wont, regretful child poverty and need — not that these issues recede into the background, for they are always there and of present concern — but amidst the madness of our days, there is at times just baseball & you, running to first base, stealing second, watching home runs sail over the far green fence, double plays, curveballs, sinkers & sliders.

Baseball. It’s nice and slow, and easy and safe. And some days, game day, that works just fine for me, and I’m willing to wager, it will for you, too.

Field of Dreams, 1988

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Battle for 58 West Hastings

June 20, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

2018 COPE Vancouver City Council must-elect candidate Jean Swanson (middle), at City Hall

At 58 West Hastings, across the street from the Army & Navy, there exists in relation to that property, a tale of treachery and political malfeasance, the likes of which our town has rarely witnessed in its 132-year history.
An unconscionable transgressive act of deceit, civic malpractice and faithlessness, as demonstrated by our current Vision Vancouver civic administration, upon vulnerable persons resident in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood, an unconscionable failure to act in good faith, continues to deny some of our city’s most vulnerable and needful residents of what they most desire, and which most every person reading VanRamblings today takes for granted, as a human right: a home.
Yesterday morning, activists, journalists and persons of conscience Nathan Crompton, Steffanie Ling and Caitlin Shane published an expansive chronicle on the sorry history of 58 West Hastings, in a story titled Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018.
Today, I have linked above to The Mainlander story, a chronicle that is a must-and-a-compelling read, constituting VanRamblings’ post for the day.
Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018 commences with the following paragraph (with excerpted paragraphs from further down in the article, immediately following) …

For years, an empty lot at 58 West Hastings has been at the centre of a fight for social housing in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). Since 2007, it has been the site of numerous actions including the 2010 Olympic Tent Village, when women- and Indigenous-led tent city forced Concord Pacific to abandon its condo plans for the site, followed by a four-month tent city in the summer of 2016.

By early 2017, the 250 units promised by the mayor were reduced to a meagre 77 units — 33% of the overall project. Amidst a sea of condos, less than one hundred welfare- and pension-rate rental units are now planned for 58 West Hastings according to the City’s latest documents. These units will not be built until 2021 at the earliest.

The City’s lies and inaction on 58 W. Hastings will claim the lives of hundreds unless Mayor Robertson’s promise is followed through. We, the poor and the homeless of the Downtown Eastside will not sit idly as our elected officials deprive us of the housing we need. We are not a statistic; numbers to be counted and shuffled around in the attempt to remake the city for the rich. We will fight for our lives and our right to live with dignity. There will be no business as usual at City Hall unless our demands are met.

We in Vancouver do not live in a consequence free universe, and neither do the political figures who have controlled civic government in Vancouver these past many years.
Arising from the despair many of those who call the DTES home have felt over many, many years of frustratingly heartless government at all three levels of civic, provincial and national governance, a palpable movement for change, and change now, has arisen, an activist movement the likes of which many of us who have called Vancouver home for the past sixty and more years have not seen since the pre-and-unrealized-revolutionary days of the New Left, and the work of activists in the 1960s and 1970s.
The central tenets of the 2018 Vancouver civic election is the realization extant of the movement of change, in a call for The City We Need.

Coalition of Progressive Electors 2018 Vancouver City Council candidates Jean Swanson, Anne Roberts and Derrick O’Keefe, the Green Party of Vancouver’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, and OneCity Vancouver City Council candidates Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle are committed to building The City We Need, an inclusive city, a fair and socially just city, a city for all of us and not the resort city our previous provincial government — and, perhaps even, a Vision Vancouver civic administration holding power at Vancouver City Hall this past 10 years — seemed intent on building, barring many of our citizens from realizing their most cherished hope of a living in a home in the city where they have resided all their lives.
Make no mistake: change is on the way this civic election season!

As I say above, Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018 is a compelling, must-read for all Vancouver citizens.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Ian Campbell on CBC’s Early Edition

June 19, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell, is asking for your vote in 2018

On June 7th, Vision Vancouver — the ruling party at Vancouver City Hall for the past 10 years — announced that Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Ian Campbell, had been selected as the party’s 2018 Mayoral nominee.

The following morning, Mr. Campbell visited the downtown Vancouver studios of CBC Radio One, where he was interviewed by respected broadcast journalist Stephen Quinn, the host of Vancouver’s top-rated morning news and information radio show, The Early Edition. The entirety of the often contentious interview is available in the video directly below.

CBC Radio One Early Edition interview with Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate, Ian Campbell

At the 7 minute,15 second mark of the interview, Mr. Quinn queries Ian Campbell on his thoughts on the implementation of a so-called Mansion Tax, a plank in the platform of Coalition of Progressive Electors’ City Council candidate, Jean Swanson, while also querying Mr. Campbell on the efficacy of the provincial New Democratic party government’s new School Surtax.
As you’ll hear upon listening to the interview, despite Stephen Quinn asking the question of Mr. Campbell several times as to whether he supported both the Mansion Tax and the School Surtax, Vision Vancouver Mayoral candidate Ian Campbell obfuscated on the question, refusing to give Mr. Quinn anything close to what might be considered an adequate reply to a 2018 Vancouver civic election issue of some contention, and an issue that all of Vancouver’s progressive, left-of-centre parties — OneCity Vancouver, the Green Party of Vancouver, and the Coalition of Progressive Electors, save perhaps Mr. Campbell’s own party, Vision Vancouver — will run on.
Perhaps, the individual who was most exorcised by Ian Campbell’s refusal to answer Stephen Quinn’s direct question on the Mansion Tax and the School Surtax was CBC reporter Justin McElroy …

CBC Radio One Vancouver's The Early Edition | Interview with Ian Campbell, Vision Vancouver's 2018 Mayoral candidate

At this point, we’ll say that Vision Vancouver Mayoral aspirant Ian Campbell will have to do a much better job of answering questions put to him by reporters during the course of the next four months — VanRamblings notes, in passing, that it is four months to the day today when Vancouver voters will go to the polls to elect our city’s next Mayor and City Council.
During this next four month period, Ian Campbell will have to make it abundantly clear as to which side he is on, whether he supports the initiatives being placed before voters by his coalition One City / Green / COPE partners, and whether he’s ready to build the city that we all need.

The City We Need? A Vancouver that is defined by social justice, most certainly, but a city as well that is committed to building thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of homes — as independent Mayoral candidate, UBC professor of urban affairs, Patrick Condon is advocating for: housing co-ops, land trusts, owned homes on city land leases, and all forms of non-market housing, towards the creation of an affordable housing city for all, where 50% of homes in Vancouver will be designated as social housing, as Mr. Condon has explicated, and is often referred to as the Vienna Model.

Vancouver is situated on unceded / stolen Coast Salish territory

Squamish Nation traditional territory includes the settler community of Vancouver.

Each time we write about Ian Campbell on VanRamblings, the same issue is raised by our readers — and some friends and associates — to wit: “Ian Campbell lives in North Vancouver. He’s not even a Vancouver resident.”
The answer to the erroneous charge: take a look at the graphic above, Vancouver is situated on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples, and in the case of Vancouver, in Squamish Nations territory. Let’s be clear: we in Vancouver are settlers. More than 200 years ago, we stole the lands on which we live from our indigenous peoples, no treaty was ever signed with the Squamish Nation, nor any other First Nations peoples in British Columbia, the Squamish Nation did not relinquish their sovereignty over their land — which, as I point out above, Vancouver is situated on.
To say that Ian Campbell is not a “resident” of Vancouver must be seen as a failure to acknowledge Squamish Nation sovereignty over the lands we call home, and that we are interlopers living on stolen land, resident in Vancouver only by the good graces of the Squamish Nation peoples.
Let us hope, once and for all, that the issue of Ian Campbell’s “residency” is finally put to rest, that we acknowledge Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Ian Campbell is offering his Vision Vancouver candidacy as Mayor of our city on lands that are his ancestral lands, and that he has every right to bring his name forward, and ask for the support of the Vancouver electorate in the crucial 2018 civic election on election day, Saturday, October 20th.
Final note: Should Ian Campbell garner the support of the Vancouver & District Labour Council as the VDLC’s choice for the next Mayor of our city, VanRamblings will enthusiastically support Mr. Campbell’s candidacy, and will do all in our power to see that he becomes our next Mayor. In the interim — all of the first part of today’s column aside, which is not meant as an attack on Ian Campbell’s good name, nor on his unrivaled contribution to the livability of our city, but rather is issued as a plea for clarity from Mr. Campbell as to the tenets of his campaign for the office of Mayor …
VanRamblings continues to believe that Ian Campbell would make a fine Mayor for our city, that not only is Ian Campbell a man of much erudition and accomplishment, but that he is as well possessed of a humane and caring manner, and way of bringing himself to the world, and that he is a humble man of character, integrity, much wit & good humour, with a ready, warm, genuine, engaging and reassuring smile — and dare we say grace — and a man worthy and deserving of your consideration in the coming days and weeks ahead in this civic election season as, perhaps, Vancouver’s next Mayor, and the man to lead our beloved city by the sea into the future.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | OneCity Vancouver Nominates Candidates

June 18, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

OneCity Vancouver’s 2018 candidates for City Council, Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle

United Church Minister, longtime community activist and lifelong Vancouver resident, Christine Boyle — for those of you who have been following VanRamblings’ coverage of the 2018 Vancouver civic election, you’ll know the accomplished Ms. Boyle is our favourite 2018 candidate for office — and Brandon Yan, a community activist with a Master’s degree in Urban Studies from Simon Fraser University, where he researched civic education and public engagement practices — were selected by OneCity Vancouver’s membership as the party’s 2018 candidates for Vancouver City Council.

OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle addressing members at nomination meeting

Brandon ‘hope of our future‘ Yan thanking new members of OneCity Vancouver

OneCity Vancouver 2018 School Board Candidates

OneCity Vancouver’s Jennifer Reddy, Erica Jaaf & current Vancouver School Board trustee Carrie Bercic were selected as the party’s 2018 candidates for Vancouver School Board

OneCity Vancouver also selected its 2018 Vancouver School Board candidates at Saturday’s nomination meeting: Jennifer Reddy, 2010 – 2017 Vancouver School Board Program Director for Engaged Immigrant Youth & Settlement Workers in Schools; Data Manager for Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) — Canada’s federal funding agency for health research — HIV Trials Network, and longtime public education activist, Erica Jaaf; and veteran public education activist, current OneCity Vancouver School Board trustee, and the conscience of the Board, Carrie Bercic.
Under a progressive coalition arrangement struck with the Vancouver & District Labour Council, OneCity Vancouver was allowed to run two City Council and three Vancouver School Board candidates. In the 2018 civic election, OneCity has chosen not to run Vancouver Park Board candidates.

Brandon Yan committed to electing a progressive civic administration at City Hall this year.

All was not sweetness and light at the OneCity Vancouver, though — although you’ll never meet a more engaged and good-humoured, passionate and compassionate group of civic politicos than is evident hourly with the good, caring and activist folks involved in OneCity. No, the hardest working and most organized, with the best on-the-ground team signing up members and running a pretty darn skookum nomination campaign, was Ben Bollinger, who could be seen standing outside the Polish Community Centre building gently kvetching that a OneCity nomination candidate for Council, other than he, looked likely to be selected by the some 266 OneCity members ready to cast their ballot on Saturday afternoon.
Blame Charlie Smith, the Georgia Straight’s longtime editor, who wrote a column last week headlined Racist at-large voting system creates uphill challenge for Vancouver candidates of colour, in which he wrote …

“Vancouver’s at-large system would lead to the election of hardly any new candidates of colour to Vancouver council. It might result in an even whiter council than the current group, which includes Kerry Jang and Raymond Louie.”

One supposes that VanRamblings didn’t actually aid Mr. Bollinger’s venture, either, when we pointed out in a June 5th column that …

According to the 2016 census demographic, Vancouver’s population by racial and ethnic breakdown …

Chinese: 27.7%
South Asian: 6%
Filipino: 6%
Southeast Asian: 3%
Japanese: 1.7%
Korean: 1.5%
West Asian: 1.2%

Take a look at the figures: 47.1% of Vancouver’s population is Asian.

The Asian vote is monolithic.

Buzz in the Polish Centre Hall was that members should give serious consideration to casting a ballot for either candidate of colour, Brandon Yan or RJ Aquino, which venture ended up savaging Mr. Bolliger’s unannounced vote total. Still, almost unique to OneCity Vancouver, members and candidates in the party work together as a team, for the greater good not just of the party, but for the citizens of Vancouver.
You can take it to the bank that there’ll be no harder-working OneCity Vancouver campaigner for OneCity candidates than Ben Bolliger.
Full disclosure: VanRamblings is a member of OneCity Vancouver, although we keep at top of mind, Groucho Marx’s old aphorism, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
For now, though, VanRamblings has something of a love affair going on with OneCity Vancouver (although, we’re quite sure we’re driving them crazy — condolences may be sent to OneCity co-chairs Alison Atkinson and Anna Chudnovsky, as well as Board member Cara Ng, and OneCity Vancouver City Council candidate, must, must, must-elect Christine Boyle).
2018’s Vancouver civic election is — for the first time ever, we believe — a heart election, an election in which we believe that the most compassionate and heart-filled candidates in the current civic election will be elected to Vancouver City Council, Vancouver School Board & Vancouver Park Board.
Of course, we’re talking: informed heart, fiscally prudent heart, affordable housing championing heart, public education activist heart, parks, recreation and environmentally conscious heart, good-humoured and good-natured heart, change the city for all of us, and not just the elites, representing heart — a beating, vibrant heart that will sweep OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle & Brandon Yan, Coalition of Progressive Electors’ Jean Swanson, Anne Roberts & Derrick O’Keefe, and Green Party of Vancouver’s’ Adriane Carr & Pete Fry to a bountiful victory as the 2018 – 2022 Vancouver City Councillors of conscience, to build The City We Need.