VanRamblings’ Vancouver City Council Endorsements may be found here.
VanRamblings’ Vancouver School Board Endorsements may be found here.

If you haven’t read Part 1 of VanRamblings’ Vancouver Park Board Endorsements List Rationale, you’ll want to read it first, the post focusing mainly on VanRamblings’ favourite candidate for Park Board, John Coupar.
Arriving at the conclusions I have in respect of identifying those candidates I believe possess both the gravitas to become true defenders of the public interest and, pragmatically, have a decent chance of gaining the trust of Vancouver voters and defeating what is for many the worst Park Board in the 128-year-young history of that august body was not an easy task.
Vancouver’s Park Board Commissioners have — up until this past six years, when a Vision Vancouver-led majority Park Board slate was elected to office — acted as stewards of our parks and recreation system.
Let’s have a look at the remaining Vancouver Park Board candidates endorsed by VanRamblings earlier in the week.

Stuart Mackinnon, a MUST-ELECT Green Party of Vancouver candidate for Park Board

Following John Coupar on my list of must-elects to Park Board, my next favourite must-elect is the Green Party of Vancouver’s one-term Vancouver Park Board Commissioner (2008 – 2011) Stuart Mackinnon who, as he says on his blog, “has fought for the preservation of our foreshore and our natural beaches, who believes in our Park Board’s community services system,” and who has always been a staunch defender of the independence of our neighbourhood community centre associations.
In addition, as a well-respected educator for some 26 years, central to Stuart’s campaign platform is his belief that “every child should be able to play in their own neighbourhood,” which means parks nearby and playgrounds, and a livable city for all of us who live across the vast expanse of our metropolitan city by the sea, is central to Stuart’s belief system.
Earlier today, I received the following e-mail from my friend Margery Duda, an advocate for the restoration of community outdoor pools, who writes …

Stuart Mackinnon advocated for outdoor pools when he was on Park Board, 2008 to 2011, and as a Green Party of Vancouver candidate for Park Board in 2011 was instrumental in having the Greens adopt a plan to replace outdoor pools fallen into disrepair, and build new ones.

Outdoor pools have gained a lot of traction in this election campaign, and that is music to the ears of pool advocates.

With the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) being on the record supporting outdoor pools via past Park Board Chairperson and current Park Board candidate, Anita Romaniuk, thanks to Stuart and Anita, the Non-Partisan Association’s game-changing commitment to build three outdoor pools if elected, and now with the Greens making it official, too, outdoor swimming pools are sure to return as a part of Vancouver’s recreation network, a development for which we are glad, indeed.

Note should be made, as well, that the smaller parties such as the Vancouver Cedar Party and IDEA have also committed to outdoor pools, as have some of the independents.

Those of us who have advocated for outdoor pools believe that it is unfortunate that six years were wasted under Vision Vancouver, when we could have been replacing our outdoor pools. When Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioners first ran for office in 2008, a central tenet of their platform was a replacement of our outdoor pools network — since their election, they have reversed themselves on that very important commitment made to many of us who live in neighbourhoods across our city. We’ve continued our fight, in the community and at Park Board.

The Mount Pleasant Outdoor Pool could have been completed as early as 2010, when Mount Pleasant Park was re-developed following a public consultation that rated the pool as the community’s top priority. During the six years of Vision Vancouver governance at Park Board, opportunities for green technology grants and federal infrastructure funding were passed over by Vision in favour of building expensive indoor destination pools only.

Although Vision voted against a proposal to fund an outdoor pool in the current Capital Plan presented to voters, with the great support that has been forthcoming from the Green Party’s outstanding candidate for Park Board, Stuart Mackinnon, and support from our good friend, COPE’s Anita Romaniuk, we believe that should a mixed Park Board slate of Green Party of Vancouver, the Non-Partisan Association, COPE and perhaps one or two independents — such as IDEA’s Jamie Lee Hamilton or James Buckshon — outdoor pools are attainable within the current Capital Plan.

Outdoor pool advocates: Sharpen your pencils and get out to vote between Wednesday November 12th and Saturday November 15th.”

With a Green Party of Vancouver platform that advocates for community-driven planning — that regards community centre associations as partners, not adversaries — replacement of outdoor pools, zero waste, local food systems and access to nature, and a revitalization of Park Board facilities and our parks’ infrastructure, the Greens’ Stuart Mackinnon and Michael Wiebe, are two absolute must-elects for Vancouver Park Board.

Erin Shum, running with the Non-Partisan Association, is — far and away — VanRamblings’ favourite new candidate seeking office for Park Board.
For the past year, Erin has regularly attended the bi-weekly Park Board meetings, and on several occasions has spoken at the Park Board table advocating for the community interest on a range of issues of concern to residents living in neighbourhoods across our city. Erin’s is a strong, reasoned and clarion voice, a welcome advocate for the public interest.
Having spoken, and worked, with Erin for the past year, VanRamblings can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the woman you see pictured above is one tough cookie, a candidate who possesses a clear, informed understanding of the issues at play before Park Board; it was John Coupar and Erin who argued for the inclusion of a plank in the NPA platform calling for the restoration of our outdoor pools system; it is Erin Shum — working with John Coupar and fellow NPA candidate for Park Board, Casey Crawford — who have vowed to restore $10.2 million in funding for the redevelopment of the Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre, monies that were approved in the 2011 City of Vancouver capital plan, but never spent.
In respect of the NPA’s outdoors pools initiative, at the announcement of the NPA’s Park Board platform, it was Erin Shum who told the media that were gathered, “Vancouver is dramatically underserved when it comes to outdoor pools. Going forward, we make this commitment to the people of Vancouver that we will consult with the community on where the new outdoor facilities should be located, and in our first term of office, we will commit to the construction of three new, or replacement, outdoor pools.”
Make no mistake, Erin Shum is a person of sage wisdom well beyond her years, an advocate for the Gen-Y voters of her generation and for all of us, and for the burgeoning community of citizens of Chinese descent who have come to regard Erin Shum as a champion of the community interest.
VanRamblings is in complete accord with the belief that Erin Shum is a voice for the people, an activist and an advocate of the first order for the public interest, one of the brightest and strongest political figures to emerge out of Vancouver’s increasingly buoyant municipal political scene in years.
In a world where too often those in elected political office simply dedicate themselves to serving the interests of the political parties that got them elected, while remaining mute on the issues of the day, Erin Shum has emerged as a vocal champion of the public interest, a partner for fellow Non-Partisan Association candidates John Coupar and Casey Crawford — and a candidate for Park Board who has vowed to restore $10.2 million in funding allocated in the failed Vision Vancouver 2011 capital plan for the necessary re-development of the Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre.

Mount Pleasant Park, where Erin Shum is committed to seeing a new outdoor pool built

Erin Shum, along with her NPA running mates John Coupar and Casey Crawford, Green Party of Vancouver Park Board candidates Stuart Mackinnon and Michael Wiebe, and COPE’s Anita Romaniuk — should voters place their confidence in them — are the candidates for Park Board who, commencing on December 1st, 2014, when the newly-elected Park Board Commissioners will be sworn into office, will transform governance at Park Board, and restore our desecrated parks to their former, natural beauty, and end once and for all the hostile, Dr. Penny Ballem-driven — endorsed by the Vision Vancouver caucus — heartbreakingly contentious Vancouver City Hall relationship with our beleaguered community centre associations.

Park Board MUST-ELECTS: Anita Romaniuk, Casey Crawford, and Michael Wiebe

Make no mistake, VanRamblings’ loves John Coupar, Stuart Mackinnon and Erin Shum, but as complementary must-elects to Vancouver Park Board, I am just as over the moon about COPE’s Anita Romaniuk, the NPA’s Casey Crawford, and the Green Party of Vancouver’s Michael Wiebe.
Vancouver’s School Board and Vancouver City Council candidate endorsement lists cost me sleepless nights, and hours on the phone, responding to e-mails and online explaining myself — it’s been a tough slog, let me tell you. The VanRamblings’ Park Board endorsements — well, they were a no-brainer, the choices so obvious, the quality of the candidates so high, there was no other direction VanRamblings could go.
Anita Romaniuk, Chair of the Vancouver Park Board in 2004 and Chair of the Park Board Finance Committee from 2003 to 2005, Anita has …

• Served six years on the Board of the Douglas Park Community Association;
• Six more years as a member of the Douglas Park Arts Committee and the Park Improvement and Heather Park Committees;
• Since 2006, Anita has worked with Margery Duda, and others, as a member of the Mount Pleasant Community Association’s Pool Committee, where she’s still advocating for the replacement of their outdoor pool;
• In 2009, Anita became a founding member of the Vancouver Society for Preservation of Outdoor Pools;
• In 2008, Anita joined the Board of Directors for the Save Our Parklands Association, and has served as its President since November 2011.

As VanRamblings has written elsewhere, Anita and I served on COPE’s Parks & Recreation Committee, and together with Jamie Lee Hamilton drafted much of COPE’s Park Board platform.
John Coupar, VanRamblings’ very favourite candidate for Park Board, has said that he hopes Vancouver voters elect Anita to Park Board, that her institutional Park Board memory, and the likelihood that she’d hold his feet to the fire — John is nothing, if not a humble man — were he to become the next Chairperson of the Park Board
For the purposes of reference, all Park Board Commissioners vote on who the Chair will be, each year of their term in office.
In 2014, there is general consensus among all the serious candidates VanRamblings has endorsed that, given all of his good work this past three years and his commitment to our parks and recreation system, John has earned the right to become the next Park Board Chairperson, and thus they will vote that way when the time comes.
For VanRamblings, a vote for the candidates on VanRamblings’ endorsement list is mandatory for anyone who cares about the welfare of our parks, our recreation system, restoration of our outdoor pools system, a return of Hastings Park to Park Board jurisdiction, implementation of the gender-variant policy, and all of the myriad issues — some known, some not yet known — that Park Board will face over the next four years.
VanRamblings urges you to save a vote for Anita Romaniuk for Park Board.

Casey Crawford is the unsung hero of the 2014 Vancouver civic election, the under-the-radar candidate for Park Board who has more knowledge in his little finger about the state of our playing fields across Vancouver — in a word, dreadful — and how that impacts on the boys and girls who play soccer, rugby, baseball or field hockey, and the jeopardy into which the children have been placed by a politicized, out-of-touch Vision Vancouver majority Park Board, than all of the other Park Board candidates combined.
VanRamblings looks at the NPA’s campaign website for Casey Crawford, and believes most who would surf to the site would say, “What? Who’s this Casey Crawford fella, and what kind of Park Board Commissioner would he make?” Without wishing to become profane, VanRamblings would suggest the answer to that question is, “Casey Crawford would be a damn fine Park Board Commissioner, an advocate for our children, an advocate for children’s sports, and during his term of office, there is little doubt in my mind that the media would identify Casey Crawford as the go-to guy on amateur sport in our city, and on any issue related to our playing fields.”
Vote for Casey Crawford? Your darn tootin’ you should – you MUST!

Last, but certainly not least, there’s the Green Party of Vancouver’s Michael Wiebe, the new kid on the block, so to speak, business owner and community leader who, when he was 16 became a Park Board lifeguard (and later co-founded the Vancouver Lifeguard Association), who earned his Bachelor’s in Business Administration, worked for the B.C. government administering public board appointments — and is, to boot, a charter member of the Mount Pleasant Implementation Committee.

Kitsilano Park Board All-Party Candidates Meeting, Nov. 3, 2014 | Video by Elvira Lount

Michael says that as a Park Board Commissioner he’s committed to …

Building more natural parks — under Vision Vancouver there’s been only one new park built in the past six years, the neglected pocket poodle park and 18th and Main — working towards the creations of a healthier, sustainable food system, fostering grassroots community initiatives in every neighbourhood across our city; and working to create a sustainable waste management programme that meets the needs of all of the citizens of Vancouver.

Truth-to-tell, it’ll probably take Michael a few months to get up to speed — which is the case for every new member of Park Board — but according to my friend Gena Kolson, Michael’s Grade 12 teacher …

“Michael is extremely bright and a hard worker, picks things up faster than any student I ever worked with, is dedicated, passionate, a democrat to his core, someone people turn to, and a natural born leader. There’s no question about whether I’ll cast a vote for Michael; of course, I would. Michael will be a real asset on Park Board — voters won’t be sorry they voted for Michael.”

Well, there you go, VanRamblings’ top six candidates for Vancouver Park Board, each one of whom we endorse enthusiastically.

Continue reading Decision 2014: Vancouver Park Board Endorsements Rationale →

[The following post constitutes the first part of a two-part series to be published today and tomorrow, on the rationale for VanRamblings’ Vancouver Park Board Endorsements, the issues with which our incoming 2014 Park Board Commissioners will be confronted, and how the platforms of the three civic parties who have received a VanRamblings endorsement will impact on the resolution of the issues that will come before Park Board. In Part 2 of the Vancouver Park Board series, readers will find an apology to independent Park Board candidates, Jamie Lee Hamilton and James Buckshon — who we know to be persons of passion & integrity & immense caring for our parks — for having left them off our endorsements list.]

As the Vancouver Park Board watchdog (so named by The Courier’s Sandra Thomas), VanRamblings is in a unique position to identify the issues that Park Board will confront in the next term, 2014 through 2018, and of all the candidates who are running for the position of Park Board Commissioner — and, who are likely to garner favour with the voters — we believe will best serve the interests of the citizens of Vancouver during the next four year term at Vancouver’s cherished, 128-year-young, Vancouver Park Board.

John Coupar, NPA Park Board Commissioner | Photo credit: Dan Toulgoet, The Courier

First and foremost is John Coupar, already a sitting Non-Partisan Association (NPA) Park Board Commissioner. Over the course of the past three years, I have come to know John very well, as a man of uncommon intelligence and compassion, articulate and achingly bright and principled, whose love (and knowledge) of our parks and recreation system is unparalleled among any of my acquaintances — and I know and am close to COPE’s Anita Romaniuk, long my mentor and teacher on all things Park Board. Yet I am still able to designate John Coupar as the most passionate and knowledgeable on all things Park Board among all of my acquaintances who possess a love for our city’s parks and recreation system.
Married to the love of his life, Heather, for some 35 years now, John — a native of Vancouver — raised his 2 children in the Dunbar neighbourhood. As his children grew and left the family nest, a few years back, John and Heather downsized, moving into the Village on False Creek, considered by many to be one of the greenest communities on the continent.
A past president of the Friends of the Bloedel Association, and past governor of the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, John has long been a passionate advocate for horticultural excellence in parks and green spaces, his passion arising as a result of the times spent in his youth with his father Charles, a renowned horticulturalist who served the Vancouver Park Board with distinction for 42 years.
John Coupar is perhaps most well known for his successful effort to save Vancouver’s Bloedel Conservatory at Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, his work on that project catapulting him into elected office as Park Board Commissioner, in November 2011’s Vancouver civic election.
In his initial term of office at Park Board, John was the first to identify Vision Vancouver’s egregious, inchoate decision to pave over a significant portion of Hadden and Kitsilano Beach parks, as he went on to play a key role in defeating Vision Vancouver’s proposal of a 12-foot-wide asphalt bike path through two of Vancouver’s most venerated west side parks, a well-used recreational resource for citizens across the Metro Vancouver region.
If there is one wish that I could have fulfilled in this election, it would be that John Coupar become our next Park Board Chairperson, leading an activist group of parks and recreation advocate Park Board Commissioners, who together would work toward restoring the beauty of Vancouver’s parks, long untended to and desecrated by a Vision Vancouver-led Park Board, who have proven more interested in scoring political brownie points with Vancouver City Manager Dr. Penny Ballem and their “betters” at City Hall, the Vision Vancouver councillors who sit around the Council table.

Three anecdotes about John that will provide insight into the man …

• The most common sentiment you’ll hear expressed by members of the public in attendance at Park Board meetings who, after listening to the deliberations of the Commissioners on the issue of contention that has brought them to the Park Board offices, are most often wont to say, “John Coupar, he’s the green advocate at the Park Board table, he’s the advocate for the public, not the Vision commissioners. I voted for Vision last time because I wanted to leave a green legacy for my children and grandchildren. Never again. In 2014, I will vote for John Coupar, and anyone on the team he is running with!”
• Last spring, when the gender-variant policy was presented to Park Board, the most moving address to those gathered in a crowded Park Board conference meeting room was that given by John Coupar, who thanked all of those who had presented to Park Board on an issue of importance to each person in attendance, and to him, saying in part, “Sitting on Park Board for the past almost three years has proven to be the most enlightening and moving experience of my life, and never more so than was the case this evening. I want you to know that you have an advocate in me, and in my fellow Park Board Commissioner, Melissa De Genova, that we will fight for you, we will fight for inclusivity in our parks and in our community centres. Working together with all of the Commissioners around the table, I commit to you today that our parks and community centres will become welcoming and safe havens for you, where you will be respected always. I look forward to working together with you, and with Park Board staff, on the early implementation of all facets of the gender-variant policy on which you have worked so hard, and has proved of such service to our community. Throughout my life, I have made a commitment to inclusivity, fairness and equity — let us work together, go forward and write a new chapter in our social and political history, as we work toward a community of comfort, respect and acceptance that serves the interests of all of our citizens.”
• One morning, in the spring of this year, I received a call from John, asking if I might meet with him near his home in the Olympic Village. I hopped on my bike, and about half an hour later, the two of us met at Terra Breads, and following a late morning repaste, John and I set out on a walk from the village to Yaletown, adjacent to the waters of south False Creek, along the winding path past Science World, Concord Pacific’s contentious sales centre, through until we reached Yaletown.

  Along the way, John pointed out the invasive species that had choked out the trees and shubbery that had been planted at the time of the construction the Olympic village. The path on which we walked was overgrown with untended to, 6-foot high weeds along the centre median, and on the north side of the Science Centre, on the fenced off area between the path and early spring blue waters of False Creek were strewn a motley assortment of shopping carts, blankets and water-soaked and torn mattresses, and every kind of garbage imaginable, most of which had clearly found a home of some long duration, ignored by the city and by Park Board — not because Park Board General Manager Malcolm Bromley, and Vancouver’s first-rate (and lovers of our parks) Park Board staff, had failed in their duties to the citizens of Vancouver in keeping the paths and lands adjacent to the waters of False Creek free of unwelcome detritus, but rather because a Vision Vancouver Park Board led by Aaron Jasper, and before that Sarah Blyth and Constance Barnes, had allowed the lands around False Creek to fall into a state of abandon, as they pursued the “higher” political goals of attempting to rename our parks after Vision Vancouver financial supporters, plan a foreshore destroying seawall ‘seaside greenway’ bike path from Kitsilano Beach to Jericho Beach, or to hive off half of the well-utilized and much-loved by the community, Langara Golf Course — green space of value to all members in the Langara community in an under-parked neighbourhood, we learned on the night 150 angry Langara residents turned up at Park Board to oppose the destruction of the golf course in favour of “low cost”, Gregor Robertson-endorsed $1.8 million dollar affordable condominiums, while the other half of the golf course would become a “new” park.

  Langara residents weren’t buying it, as pandemonium broke out at the Park Board office that night, as so often has proved the case before a discredited Vision Vancouver-led Park Board.

  That overcast, still chilly, now spring afternoon, John turned to me as we headed back toward the village from Yaletown, and with an audible sigh said to me, “You know, Ray, if I am given the opportunity to become the next Chairperson of the Park Board, all that we have seen today on our walk will be remedied and repaired, invasive species that destroy the beauty of our parks will be a thing of the past. Sometimes, I reflect on what the reaction of my father might be to the disregard of our parks and recreation system under a Vision-led administration at Park Board — I know he wouldn’t be happy to see his service and his legacy to our city so abused, our parks and all the trees in our parks so mistreated. Our staff at Park Board are world class, as caring and committed a cadre of park preservationists as I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. But with millions of dollars of cuts to our Park Board budget, with the priorities of Park Board placed on everything but the maintenance of our parks, Park Board staff are overwhelmed with all that needs doing, and chairperson after Vision chairperson has prioritized political initiatives that have little or nothing to do with maintaining our parks, and everything to do with promoting an agenda they think will serve their political supporters.

  Please forgive me, but I have to say that I am more than a little disquieted with what we’ve seen today. I hope the people of Vancouver might see their way clear someday to electing a Park Board who will become true stewards of our parks and recreation system, and not political apparatchiks whose duty is not to the citizens of Vancouver, but to their political masters from whom they take instruction.”

A neighbour of mine was saying to me last week when referring to the political parties, and the candidates, currently seeking elected office — on all three civically-elected bodies in the Vancouver municipal election — “They’re all the same, they’re all in it only for themselves. They could give a damn about us, they care only about what they can get out of it for themselves.”
With all due respect to my neighbour, the cynical, simplistic, wrong-headed, uninformed and disempowering notion voiced above, with the advance polls open this week, and with election day this upcoming Saturday, there are simply too many voters out there — such as my neighbour — who will stay home and risk the possibility for all of us that the most developer-friendly, most dismissive of the concerns of folks like you and me civic party will be elected to office for four more years, so that they might once again roll over our collective interests, and over you & me.
Change does not come about by cynically sitting at home on your hands — change comes by becoming informed and engaged, by giving a damn, and by fighting to make a difference. As Robert Kennedy said when running for the Democratic party presidential nomination in 1968 …

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better. Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one person can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills, misery, ignorance, and violence.

And so it is. This week, vote for a change in government in the city of Vancouver. I promise you — I guarantee — that you’ll be glad you did.

1970 – 2014. Highrises are not progress: put an end to the tower transformation of our city.

In 2014, should Vision Vancouver find themselves elected to a third majority term and a four year term of office, Vision Vancouver will work towards the completion of a programme that will lead to the destruction of neighbourhoods across our city, and a parks and recreation system that has well-served the interests of all of us who live in communities across Vancouver, such that our city will be transformed for ever more, no longer a human-scale city of livable neighbourhoods, but a city of towers and cement and a below-ground subway (really — in one of the most beautiful cities on the planet?), a city for the monied interests of the foreign national wealthy, and no longer a city for you and me, for our neighbours and friends and colleagues, and our families, for whom we care so very much.
By 2018, if Vision Vancouver is elected to a third consecutive term at Vancouver City Hall, given all the untrammeled development Vision Vancouver will have put in place, our city — our west coast paradise — will be unrecognizable and, even more, unlivable — unless we intervene at the polls this week and on election day to take our city back from the economic interests of the haute couture crowd of speculators who would seek to create yet another playground for themselves and their rich, amoral friends.
All of which means, of course, that you must not consider, and must not vote for Vision Vancouver, or any Vision Vancouver candidate running for office on Vancouver City Council, or on our beleaguered Park Board.
The social and political differences between the two major political parties seeking office in the 2014 Vancouver Civic Election could not be more stark: on the one hand, there is Vision Vancouver — secretive, vicious, Orwellian, dismissive of the community interest, and wholly given over to bettering the interests of their corporate and union bosses, and utterly dismissive of the interests of the vast majority of Vancouver’s voting electorate; and on the other hand, there is a renewed Non-Partisan Association, a party of servants of the public interest who will return open and transparent, community responsive and fiscally responsible civic government to the city of Vancouver — a party that represents your needs and that of your family.

At the outset of today’s VanRamblings post, you will find VanRamblings’ well-considered 2014 Vancouver Civic Election Candidate Endorsement List, offering a list of the names of those candidates for elected office on all three civic bodies — and the parties they are running with — who we believe represent Vancouver voters’ best opportunity to defeat an arrogant and out-of-touch (the very best thing that might be said about the current …) Vision Vancouver municipal administration.
Now, we know that the surfeit of the names of representatives of the Non-Partisan Association — particularly given that the list was composed by a left activist of some forty years — will cause distress to some of our more progressive friends, and most particularly to our colleagues in the Coalition of Progressive Electors — in 2014, there is so much on the line that it has become necessary to vote strategically, to vote for a majority candidate slate of representatives of the Non-Partisan Association, in order that we might, at the very least, give a time out to Vision Vancouver, and provide the NPA (and the members of the Green Party of Vancouver, who we believe will be elected to Council and Park Board) the opportunity to open the books, slow development in our neighbourhoods, and restore our — what once was, but is no longer — world-class parks & recreation system.
Throughout the remainder of the week, VanRamblings will provide the rationale behind the composition of the 2014 Vancouver Civic Election Candidate Endorsement List you see above, the very important issues that are at play at Vancouver City Council, at Park Board and at School Board, and what the re-election of a majority Vision Vancouver civic administration would mean for our city going forward, if in the blinkered wisdom of the electorate, Vision Vancouver were to be elected to a third majority term.

Tuesday is Remembrance Day, a day when we reflect on the sacrifices of those who came before, who fought valiantly for the preservation of our, sometimes flawed, but absolutely necessary democratic form of government, so many among us take for granted. On Saturday, November 15th, voters across Vancouver will be given the opportunity to return good government to our city — please get out and vote to make a difference.

If you’ve arrived on this page of the VanRamblings blog, and haven’t read Part 1 of A Primer on Civic Politics in Vancouver, you may want to read it first, as the initial post contains elements which may be of interest to you.
Today, we present a cursory insight into the history, the platforms, the principles and the raison d’être of the remaining six Vancouver municipal political parties (we covered COPE - The Coalition of Progressive Electors, in Part 1), and the candidates for these parties who are seeking office in the 2014 Vancouver municipal election. As per usual, today’s post will be given over to some of VanRamblings’ patented, some would say florid — and, we hope entertaining and informative — and always idiosyncratic commentary.
As we’ve said repeatedly over the past near five months now, the 2014 Vancouver civic election is the most crucial election in our city in the past 42 years, since Tom ‘Terrifying’ Campbell was ousted as Mayor of our west coast paradise, and good government — under the auspices of The Electors’ Action Movement (TEAM), a progressive and truly visionary centre-left municipal government — was installed at Vancouver City Hall, for multiple successive pioneering and innovational terms of civic government.
From the 1970s, we have Mayor Art Phillips and his eight TEAM Councillors of the day — UBC professors Walter Hardwick, Fritz Bowers, Setty Pendakur and William Gibson, who made up the Council’s sagacious academic quartet; respected urban planner and landscape architect, Art Cowie; future Vancouver mayor and British Columbia premier Mike Harcourt; activist, feminist and future provincial NDP cabinet minister Darlene Marzari, who fought like hell against the proposed freeway both the federal and provincial governments wanted to impose on Vancouver; as well as lawyer, & future (and eventually discredited) Vancouver mayor, lawyer Jack Volrich — to thank for the livability of the Vancouver we know and love today.
As reported by Rod Mickleburgh in his April 23, 2013 obituary, covering the life and many accomplishments of Art Phillips’ term as Mayor, he writes …

For years, the city had sold off property it owned and used the proceeds to keep taxes low. That was wrong, Phillips said. Several years ahead of Alberta’s famous Heritage Fund, he established a property endowment fund, where all revenue from the city’s extensive holdings would be deposited, invested and used, when needed, for the benefit of the city.

The list of accomplishments included an end to the city’s prevailing secrecy, holding public hearings at night so working people could attend, killing off all freeway plans, saving the storied Orpheum Theatre, improving accommodation in the benighted Downtown Eastside, the introduction of mixed-income housing, and altered zoning to allow apartment living downtown. Mr. Phillips was big on that.

“Instead of being dead at night, we wanted the downtown core to be more European, a place to live and enjoy,” he said, in his 2005 interview. “The changes we made then are taken for granted today.”

The startling decision to convert the industrial, waterside flats of False Creek just west of downtown into mixed housing was also a landmark.”

As background on one aspect of the allegations, in an October 16th article in The Courier, journalist Bob Mackin details what might be considered a pay-for-play / quid pro quo deal that many in the community — including Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe — have read and interpreted as a form of corrupt governance at City Hall, about which LaPointe wrote in an opinion piece published in The Province newspaper …

“Being clearly beholden to the city’s workers right now is an irresponsible service to the city. The union is approaching contract discussions, and any early definition of the city’s bargaining position is a breach of fiduciary duty. It gives away the store.”

Corporate donations were written about in The Straight, and reference is made to Vision Vancouver’s corporate donation base in an e-mail distributed this morning by COPE, the Coalition of Progressive Electors, that is excerpted below, detailing yet another facet of Vision Vancouver’s win-at-all-costs “dirty tricks” campaign style. Principles and ethics in the Vision Vancouver universe? — alien concepts. Little wonder that in the waning days of Campaign 2014 — as voters become aware there’s an election going on — support for Vision Vancouver has plummeted.
An excerpt from this morning’s e-mail to COPE members …

You may have received a robocall today from former City Councillor David Cadman, asking you to vote Vision. We’re told he makes a plea to COPE members not to split the vote — essentially, to hold their nose and vote Vision. We’re not sure how Vision got all these numbers but we’re going to find out.

In a sense, this is good news. It means Vision is running scared.

The same day (former COPE city councillor) Cadman endorsed Vision, the public got to see Vision’s donations. This year Vision took $1.4 million from corporations. They took $75,000 from Holborn Properties, the company that worked with the BC Liberals to replace Little Mountain public housing with luxury condos.

Yesterday, Vision held a press conference where Gregor Robertson warmly welcomed the endorsement of former NPA president, Michael Davis, a spin doctor for oil tankers.

VanRamblings knows many of the folks in the Vision Vancouver party, and we honestly and truly like them, and will probably work with many of them in future days on various New Democratic party campaigns.
That said, the experience of many of us across Vancouver who are engaged in daily political life in our metropolitan centre have come to believe that, collectively, there is a shocking, appalling and disturbing psychopathy in Vision Vancouver’s approach to governance that in Vision’s woeful six years in power has meant ill for Vancouver residents across our city, and in every Vancouver neighbourhood in our beloved community of communities.
Jak King and Garth Mullins, activists who have organized in the Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood; Stephen Bohus, and the members of his Residents Association of Mount Pleasant; Randy Helten, and all those who have worked with him in the West End Neighbours Association; Tracey Moir, working with the Oakridge Langara Area Residents; and hundreds more engaged community activists who love our city, love our parks, love our livable and walkable and human-scale neighbourhoods, and our beloved and accessible community-run neighbourhood community centres, have risen up against Vision Vancouver this past three years, and more. You should, too!
In an article published in the Globe and Mail this morning, journalist Frances Bula makes reference to the hostility that the Mayor and his Vision Vancouver colleagues have met with at the all-candidates meetings that have been held across our city this past month. No kidding!
If you have any idea at all about what Vision Vancouver has been up to the past six years (read Decision 2014 coverage on VanRamblings for a bare hint of why engaged citizens across Vancouver have risen up against Vision Vancouver during the course of this election cycle, and in the past three years), you won’t even consider casting a vote for a Vision Vancouver candidate running for office for Vancouver City Council, or for Park Board.
For a somewhat more dispassionate take on Vision Vancouver, its formation, and the history of Vision Vancouver and its faux Green liberalism, information may be found in the Wikipedia entry available online.

Green Party of Vancouver, founded 1984

The Green Party of Vancouver is a municipal political party in Vancouver that nominated Green Party of Canada deputy leader Adrianne Carr as their sole nominee for Vancouver City Council in the 2011 Vancouver civic election. Carr subsequently went on to win the seat in that year’s November 19th civic election, and is the sole Green member of Vancouver City Council.
As we wrote of Carr in Part 1 of A Primer of Civic Politics in Vancouver …

Isn’t everybody voting Green this time around, given that Green party City Councillor Adriane Carr was, throughout this last term, the conscience of Council, where over the course of those three, very trying years (when Vision Vancouver treated her despicably, and as she maintained her dignity, and her advocacy for the interests of Vancouver citizens), Adriane Carr emerged as not only the most beloved political figure in Vancouver, but across all of western Canada, as well. Make no mistake, the Green Party of Vancouver, in this hard fought municipal election campaign, will garner many, many votes at the polls, from the grateful and appreciative citizens of Vancouver …

The Green Party of Vancouver was founded in 1984, and has elected representatives to School Board, Park Board & most recently, City Council.
As above, in 2011, Adriane Carr — one of the party’s original founders — was elected as Vancouver’s first ever Green City Councillor.
Since that time, Adriane has gained the respect and admiration of Vancouver citizens who value her independent voice on Council, her strong democratic principles, and her readiness to listen to what citizens have to say and then to be a voice for them at City Hall.
In 2014, Adriane Carr is seeking re-election to Vancouver Council along with Council running mates Pete Fry and Cleta Brown. Stuart Mackinnon and Michael Wiebe are the Green party candidates for Vancouver Park Board, and Mischa Oak — who many consider to be the hardest-working candidate running for office in the 2014 Vancouver municipal election — and Janet Fraser, are the Green Party of Vancouver candidates for School Board.
In some very real sense, the Green Party of Vancouver candidate team is your independent, non-aligned voice in civic politics. Given Adriane Carr’s overwhelming & deserved popularity with voters, her political coattails in this election could very well elect all, or almost all, of the Green Party of Vancouver candidates running for Council, Park Board and School Board.

Here’s the Green Party of Vancouver’s platform, which explicates a programme which will ensure that the public interest will be placed first, that people-centred planning will predominate, where your voice will be heard, and the crisis arising from the lack of affordable housing will be addressed, and our city Vancouver will remain a compassionate, safe and inclusive city.

The Vancouver Cedar Party, founded 2013Brothers Nicholas and Glen Chernen, Vancouver Cedar Party candidates for Council

Full disclosure: in the 2014 Vancouver civic election, VanRamblings has frequently met with the members and donated monies to the Coalition of Progressive Electors, the Green Party of Vancouver, and the newest political force on the civic block, the Vancouver Cedar Party, headed up by Glen Chernen (on the right above), and his brother, Nicholas Chernen.
As it happens, the Vancouver Cedar Party campaign headquarters is located just three blocks down the way from the housing co-operative where VanRamblings has resided for the past 30+ years (and where we raised our children), the campaign office located directly across from the shuttered Hollywood Theatre on West Broadway. VanRamblings has made a point of dropping by the Cedar Party’s offices almost every day — which I’m sure on some days has driven them nuts, but even so, both Nicholas and Glen have proved invariably kind and welcoming, and forthcoming about the campaign.
More than any other party running candidates for office in the current civic election, the Vancouver Cedar Party has held Vision Vancouver’s feet to the fire — releasing one devastating press release after another detailing the egregious, secretive, wrong-headed, anti-community (some would say, corrupt) decision-making that has gone on behind closed doors at City Hall, and inside the Mayor’s office, as Vision Vancouver has sacrificed the community interest in favour of the interests of their developer friends.

Awhile back, arising from one of the Vancouver Cedar Party’s press releases, VanRamblings wrote about the hidden-from-public-view decision taken in the Mayor’s office to — without any hint of consultation with the community, never mind the elected members of Council and Park Board, including elected representatives from their own party, and a bewildered, deer-in-the-headlights Park Board General Manager, Malcolm Bromley — sell off 12 parcels of city-owned land at the north-east end of the Granville Street bridge, move the Aquatic Centre from its current location to a land-locked location east of the bridge, tear down the Continental Hotel, and seek to sign a development contract for the newly gathered together, city-owned property with one of their insider developer friends.
The Vancouver Cedar Party offers 7 reasons for entering the political fray as candidates for Council in 2014’s Vancouver civic election — and assure voters that a vote for the Cedar Party will mean that elected Council candidates will be unbeholden to anyone but you, and that elected members will work toward the restoration of fiscal responsibility at City Hall, and environmental stewardship at Vancouver Park Board.
Chances are the Vancouver Cedar Party will not elect any candidates the first time out seeking political office — although Nicholas Chernen has garnered the endorsements of community groups and political activist Jak King, as will be the case with VanRamblings when we announce our slate of candidates for endorsement in the coming week — but it’s worth your while to take a gander at their ‘Rooted in Democracy’ website, and / or drop by their campaign office for an unenlightening chat about Campaign 2014.
Honestly, Glen and Nicholas Chernen — and fellow Council candidates Charlene Sayo and Jeremy Gustafson — are worthy candidates in the 2014 Vancouver municipal election, and deserving of your attention.

One City Vancouver, founded 2014

Formed by an activist group of citizens once affiliated with the The Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), One City Vancouver is running only one candidate in this election, RJ Aquino, an individual who ran as a candidate for COPE in Vancouver’s 2011 municipal election and who, in 2014, is running as a candidate for the nascent One City Vancouver civic party. RJ has acquitted himself well on the campaign trail, emerging as a thoughtful and informed candidate for Vancouver City Council, who would well serve the interests of the citizens of Vancouver were he elected to Council.

Still, there’s this niggling thought in the back of my mind that, forever however much VanRamblings likes and respects RJ (and we do!), that if push came to shove, and he was the deciding, swing vote on Council, that he’d line up with Vision Vancouver when it came down to the crunch.
VanRamblings knows well, and has worked with, many folks who are behind the creation of One City Vancouver, and I know them all to be honourable citizens of conscience who have always had the interests of the broader community at heart, have organized to ensure democratic decision-making and citizen engagement in neighbourhoods across our city, and worked throughout their lives to work towards a fairer, more just Vancouver, and a more just world, for all — political activists who made a difference.
With the above in mind, a vote for RJ Aquino would not be a wasted vote.

As blogger and freelance civic affairs journalist Frances Bula wrote earlier today, it’s difficult to figure out why Vancouver 1st has candidates running for office in this election, what they stand for, and why voters would give even a passing thought to voting for any of their candidates?
Awhile back, Vancouver 1st announced that right-wingers Ken Denike and Sophia Woo — current members of Vancouver School Board — who were unceremoniously kicked out of the Non-Partisan Association, would run as School Board candidates for the party. Really?
At the same time, the party announced the candidacy of Olympic bronze medallist Brent Hayden for Park Board, not that he’s been seen anywhere on the campaign trail. Former President of the Thunderbird Neighbourhood Association, Massimo Rossetti, has acquitted himself well in the campaign, as has Vancouver 1st’s Jesse Johl (who’s running for Council) — but at the end of the day, unless you’re a rabid right-winger (and how many of those are there in Vancouver?), why would anyone give even a passing thought to casting a vote for any Vancouver 1st candidate? Just sayin’.