Tag Archives: peter armstrong

#VanPoli | Change is on The Near Horizon | Hope

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Council: Unofficial 2026 Vancouver Election Results

Mayor (one to be elected)

  • FRY, Pete – GREEN: 98,494

At the end of the day, the 2026 Vancouver municipal election came down to a two-way race between two-term Green City Councillor Pete Fry, and ABC Vancouver Mayoral incumbent, Ken Sim. The other three high-profile Mayoral contenders then became collateral damage in the pitched battle as to who would sit in the Mayor’s office, and chair Council meetings — beginning in the afternoon after the Inauguration of the new Council — on Monday, November 2nd through the 2030 municipal election, on as an yet undecided date.


Peter Armstrong, NPA / ABC Vancouver President, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer

On Election Day 2014, VanRamblings spent day the with Peter Armstrong (Peter is a friend, whom we love with our whole soul, body and entire heart) — the then President of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), and the owner of the Rocky Mountaineer — at NPA Election Day headquarters, in the ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

At 11am, Peter got a call from Dimitri Pantazopoulos — the longtime Stephen Harper pollster, pollster for ABC Vancouver, and current Deputy Manager of the Conservative Party of B.C. election campaign — who told Peter that NPA Mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe was running 15 points ahead of Gregor Robertson, according to their Friday night polling.

At 4pm, Peter got another call from Dimitri — explaining that Kirk was now running 15 points behind Gregor Robertson, the extensive exit polling showing that voters believed both Gregor Robertson and Kirk LaPointe stood for pretty much the same thing, and voters were making the decision to cast their ballot for Gregor over Kirk, “the devil they knew, over the devil they didn’t know.”

That is pretty much the same story in 2026.

Where Vancouver Liberals internal polling showed that their Mayoral candidate, Kareem Allam, was pretty much taking over Ken Sim’s vote on Vancouver’s west side — Point Grey, Dunbar, Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy, that had Allam polling at 22%, and in a statistical dead heat with Ken Sim — on Election Day, Saturday, October 17th, Allam’s vote collapsed and returned to Ken Sim, so fearful were right-of-centre voters about the potential for a “progressive Mayor”,  in the form of Pete Fry. Both TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick and Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh suffered from a similar fate at the polls on Election Day.

Councillors (10 to be elected)

1. ORR, Sean – COPE: 83,038
2. REILLY, Annette – GREEN: 78,476
3. LESLIE, Chloe – COPE: 67,791
4. SINGH, Devyani – COPE: 65,473
5. SMITH, Stephanie – GREEN: 64,070
6. MALONEY, Lucy – OneCity: 63,143
7. DUMONT, Camil – GREEN: 62,540
8. YI-KIERAN, Solomon – COPE: 60,361
9. KLASSEN, Mike – ABC Vancouver: 57,798
10. BURNS, Bridget – GREEN: 57,788

As we have previously written, in many ways the 2026 election reminds us very much of the 2002 Vancouver municipal election.

In 2002, incumbent Non-Partisan Association (NPA) City Councillor Jennifer Clarke staged a right wing coup to unseat popular NPA Mayor Philip Owen as Mayor of the City of Vancouver, arising from her unhappiness with Mayor Owen’s implementation of his innovative and humane Four Pillars Drug Policy, which constituted a novel strategy pioneered in Switzerland representing a tectonic shift from treating substance use as a criminal justice issue towards a public health approach. The approach placed an equal focus on harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement.

Jennifer Clarke’s bid to unseat the NPA’s popular, grassroots Mayor was successful, and in 2002 Jennifer Clarke presented herself to the Vancouver voting public as the standard bearer for the Non-Partisan Association (NPA). Pundits, politicos and the media felt quite assured that Ms. Clarke would sail to victory, for a 5th consecutive term to form a majority NPA Council. Some of us weren’t quite so sure.

In 2002, Vancouver City Council had only two elected COPE members on Council: Fred Bass and Tim Louis. The members and electeds of the Non-Partisan Association were confident that they would once again sweep Council, Park Board and School Board, as they had for the previous 12 years, and for much of the 20th century.

Of course, as happens so often, all of this political calculation failed to account for how the general public viewed Ms. Clarke’s unseemly unseating of the city’s favourite Mayor.

When the 2002 Vancouver municipal election rolled around, COPE swept Council (8 of 10 seats), swept Park Board (5 of 7 seats), and swept all the open positions around the Board of Education table (taking 7 of 9 seats), with the Greens’ Andrea Reimer holding down the 9th spot, with the Vancouver School Board.

So, for VanRamblings, the sweep of all three civic bodies by COPE and the Greens (with OneCity doing well on School Board, and re-electing OneCity’s Lucy Maloney for Council) in 2026 came as no particular surprise. Clearly, the voters of Vancouver were anxious to rid themselves of the stain of the mean-spirited civic administration of Mayor Ken Sim, and his lickspittle contingent of ABC Vancouver City Councillors.

Perhaps the most hopeful interaction VanRamblings had on Saturday evening — apart from all the hugs we received from good-hearted folks at the Vancouver Liberals Saturday night event, and at COPE’s Victory Party at the Japanese School on Alexander Street — occurred as we were nearing the entrance of the COPE party, when we ran across COPE fundraiser Gabe Goodman — flat out, one of our favourite people in the world! — who greeted us, and said …

“Thank you for taking the time to attend COPE’s Victory Party tonight, and spend time with the hundreds of good folks and staunch supporters of COPE, who you’ll see inside. Along with almost everyone else I know, I am an inveterate reader of VanRamblings, and I want to assure you, Raymond, that a key component of how the newly-elected and the re-elected members of COPE will bring themselves to their work is with kindness as a core value. I know you’ve written about the necessity of kindness in civic life. COPE has taken that notion to heart, as a core strength of our party.”

And, finally, a note to Shawn Vulliez, COPE’s very able, genius campaign manager.

Shawn Vulliez, left, COPE’s campaign manager, and Sean Orr, topping the polls for Council

Shawn: We recommend you turn your attention — working / consulting with Mayor-elect Pete Fry — to staffing the Selection Committee of Council, whose three members will choose among the thousands of applications that will be made to fill the 300+ positions that will soon be posted and made available to the public, whose members will sit on the very important Advisory Boards to Council. Might we suggest that COPE’s Devyani Singh (or Sean Orr, who might be too busy!) and Solomon Yi-Kieran sit as members of the Selection Committee, along with the Greens’ Stephanie Smith. Whatever decision you and Mayor-elect Fry arrive at will be the right decision. The Selection Committee — of which Mayor-elect Fry has been a member for the past four years — is critical to the new Council putting into place Advisory Board members who best reflect the values and civic goals of the citizens of Vancouver, and our newly-elected Vancouver City Council.

Might we suggest, as well, that you give some consideration to encouraging COPE supporter and longtime community activist Ian Marcuse — whose work on the Grandview Woodland Food Connection has supported low-income and vulnerable residents in East Vancouver — as well as the Seniors Community Kitchen, where accessible cooking and social spaces designed to support older adults in the neighbourhood has existed to support vulnerable members of our seniors population.

Now, we know that Ian would be a perfect candidate for the Vancouver Food Policy Council (VFPC) Advisory Committee, but we’d sure like to see Ian sit as a member of the Board of Variance — often referred to as the most powerful creature of civic government — where we first met Mr. Marcuse 20+ years ago, when we were sitting as a member on the COPE-dominated Board of Variance.

And don’t forget social activist and artist Irwin Oostindie, who founded the Under the Volcano Festival of Art & Social Change, and worked as the Planning Director of the Wild Bird Trust of BC in North Vancouver, which focused on decolonizing conservation, restoration and research based at Maplewood Flats, on the unceded sel̓íl̓witulh/Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters — among myriad other projects with which Irwin has been involved.

We think Irwin would make for an outstanding member of Vancouver’s City Planning Commission, a Council-appointed citizens’ advisory body that counsels Vancouver City Council on matters including housing, the public realm, neighbourhoods, transportation, and public engagement. Just sayin’ … a little food for thought.

As for us, we’re giving some consideration to making application to Vancouver’s Older Persons and Elders Advisory Committee (OPEAC) when the posting is made — cuz, you know, we’re kind of getting older now — which committee advises Vancouver City Council and staff on improving access, inclusion, and services for aging residents.

#SaveOurParkBoard | The Genesis of the ‘Movement’ to Abolish Park Board

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Vision Vancouver celebrates their overwhelming victory at the polls on November 19, 2011

Developers have long run the City of Vancouver, with various of the elected City Councils over the years acting as their all-too-willing handmaidens.


Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver founder, standing outside, near his home in Railtown

The godfather and founder of the Vision Vancouver municipal party in 2004 was financier / philanthropist / real estate developer, and heir to a capitalist fortune, Tennessee émigré Joel Solomon, a political organizer who cut his teeth working on Jimmy Carter’s successful U.S. presidential campaign in the mid-1970s.

In the early 1990s, Solomon found his way to British Columbia, as he sought refuge on Cortes Island, while recovering from a serious health issue. In 1993, Solomon  met a young organic farmer named Gregor Robertson. Their views aligned, especially on the urgent need to address climate change. The two became fast friends.

In 2002 Solomon made a decision to form a Vancouver civic party, which in time came to be called Vision Vancouver.

Recruiting Mike Magee from Stratcom —  a strategic communications company dedicated to progressive causes — working with Magee, Solomon promised the then Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) Councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson and Jim Green their political futures lay with his newly-formed Vision Vancouver civic party, committing to them that he would dedicate substantial financial resources to their re-election in 2005’s Vancouver municipal election.

Long story short — following the untimely death of Jim Green, who was Vision Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate in the 2005 civic election — in 2006, Joel Solomon recruited his friend Gregor Robertson to seek the nomination to become the Mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver in our city’s 2008 municipal election.

The rest is history: Vision Vancouver became government, from 2008 through 2018.


Gregor Robertson, Mayor in the City of Vancouver, from November 15, 2008 through October 20, 2018

Upon assuming government at Vancouver City Hall in 2008, Joel Solomon was quick to establish a secretive, behind-the-scenes “Mayoral advisory Board” — most members of which were not only longtime friends of Solomon’s dating back to his days in Tennessee, but were, as well, extremely successful real estate developers.


During their time in government, 12 development-related lawsuits were filed against Vision Vancouver

Over the course of their years in power, there were a number of development-related lawsuits that were filed against Vision Vancouver.

Perhaps the most egregious — and many thought, corrupt — development-related failing by Vision Vancouver involved a legal petition filed with the BC Supreme Court on May 6, 2014, by the Community Association of New Yaletown, to prevent a mega-tower development on the city block containing Emery Barnes Park.

The legal petition alleged the City, in approving development of the 36-storey tower at 508 Helmcken St. and a related building across the street at 1099 Richards Street violated the Downtown Official Development Plan (DODP) bylaws in in numerous and significant ways, while thwarting the long-planned expansion of Emery Barnes Park “to help reduce the City’s significant shortfall in meeting its own green space targets in the area.”


Emery Barnes Park, in the heart of New Yaletown, adjacent to Davie and Seymour streets

That Vision Vancouver had not consulted with the community, nor even made any mention of their plans to build yet another mega-tower in the New Yaletown neighbourhood — a “favour” to the Tennessee-based developer, Brenhill Development, who just happened to be friends with Joel Solomon, and members of the Mayoral Advisory Board — exacerbated not only the ire of residents of New Yaletown, but esteemed British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan, who ruled in favour of the New Yaletown residents, “killing the New Yaletown development”, even though it was already under construction.

Read the Vancouver Sun article on Brenhill Development’s “sweet deal” here.

Some months later, the City of Vancouver prevailed at the B.C. Court of Appeals.


Peter Armstrong, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer, and founder / financier of ABC Vancouver

Now Peter Armstrong — who we know and very much like, who has pulled our behind out of the fire on more than one occasion, and who refers to us as his “favourite socialist” — will not be happy that we’re writing about him (reasonably, we can expect an irate call from Peter at some point today, as in “Why didn’t you call me to confirm with me what you’re writing about today?”).

But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do (also, we hate to risk being lied to).


Founder Peter Armstrong’s Rocky Mountaineer offers unsurpassed luxury travel to discerning travelers

Now, Peter Armstrong — a pulled himself up by his bootstraps east end kid made good (we share a history as ‘east end kids’) — for many years was president of Vancouver’s oldest and most successful civic party, the Non-Partisan Association.

That is, until some dastardly folks staged a coup, taking over Peter’s beloved Non-Partisan Association in his absence, as he sailed his yacht to visit his good friend, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, at his luxurious, well-appointed villa in Italy.

The consequence of the coup? Four of five NPA electeds resigned from the party.

And what became of the now former Non-Partisan Association Board members, who succeeded in killing the NPA, which party secured only, a paltry, unimaginably small 2.3% of the vote, when voters went to the polls in October 2022?


“Raymond, do you really think I’ll win re-election in Point Grey when we go to the polls in October?”

Premier David Eby will be heartened to know that these same far-right-of-centre nimrods are currently running the show with the nascent B.C. Conservative Party.

VanRamblings readers won’t be surprised to learn that ABC Vancouver founder, financier and Ken Sim backer, Peter Armstrong — as was the case with Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver, and Mayor Gregor Robertson — has also created a secretive, behind-the-scenes Mayoral Advisory Committee, said committee comprised of developers, but mostly Peter and his very good friend, Chip Wilson.

A narrative, related to us recently by a very reliable VanRamblings source …

“Ken Sim ‘disappeared’ for a week this past autumn.

No one, save his family, knew where he was. In fact, Ken Sim was on board Peter Armstrong’s yacht, sailing up the west coast of British Columbia.

When Sim arrived back in town, returning to the Mayor’s office, he consulted with his Chief of Staff, Trevor Ford, after which the Mayor called in the ABC Park Board electeds to inform them of his decision to abolish the independent, elected Vancouver Park Board, leaving his now former ABC Park Board Commissioners in the room with Mr. Ford and David Grewal to explain details, and what would happen going forward.

Soon after, now former ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen made the decision to sit on Park Board as independents.

Subsequently, Sim called a press conference to announce his intention to eliminate the 133-year-old elected body, the much cherished, independent, and beloved Vancouver Park Board.”

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Whether it’s developer Mayor Tom Campbell in the late 60s, or Joel Solomon and Gregor Robertson for a 10-year period when Vision Vancouver was at the seat of power at Vancouver City Hall, or in these latter days, with an avuncular — but dare we say, avaricious — Peter Armstrong and Chip Wilson, we who call Vancouver home are reminded yet again, and much to our consternation, this is not our city, for Vancouver is owned lock, stock and barrel by the developer class.