In the mosaic of Vancouver’s civic infrastructure, the elected, independentPark Board stands as a cornerstone of citizen well-being, pivotal in shaping the city’s social fabric, environmental sustainability and recreational opportunities.
Established in 1888, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation holds a unique position among municipal bodies, directly accountable to the citizens it serves. With its mandate focused solely on parks, recreation, community amenities, and preservation of the natural environment, the Park Board represents an essential conduit between Vancouver’s diverse populace and its natural and urban spaces.
First and foremost, the Park Board serves as a guardian of Vancouver’s green lungs, stewarding its vast network of parks, gardens, and natural areas.
From the iconic Stanley Park to neighbourhood playgrounds, these green spaces provide invaluable ecological benefits, serving as habitats for wildlife, mitigating urban heat island effects, and fostering biodiversity.
Moreover, they offer vital havens for residents seeking respite from the hustle and bustle of city life, promoting mental health and well-being.
Park Board serves to preserve and enhance these green oases, ensuring our city remains a livable community where nature and urbanity coalesce harmoniously.
Equally significant is the Park Board’s commitment to fostering inclusive and accessible recreational opportunities for all residents.
Through its diverse array of programmes, facilities, and events, Park Board actively promotes physical activity, social cohesion, and cultural exchange.
Whether it’s swimming pools, community centres, or sports fields, these amenities serve as vital hubs for community engagement and empowerment. Moreover, initiatives such as free access programmes for low-income families and barrier-free facilities ensure that socioeconomic disparities do not hinder citizens’ access to recreational pursuits. By championing equity and inclusivity, the Park Board plays a pivotal role in strengthening the social fabric of Vancouver’s neighbourhoods.
In addition, Vancouver’s Park Board serves as a nexus for environmental advocacy and sustainability initiatives, spearheading efforts to mitigate climate change and protect natural ecosystems.
Through tree planting initiatives, shoreline restoration projects, and sustainable landscaping practices, Park Board endeavours to enhance the resilience of Vancouver’s urban environment. The Park Board’s leadership in promoting active transportation, such as cycling and walking paths, not only reduces carbon emissions but also fosters healthier and more livable neighbourhoods.
By embracing innovative solutions and community partnerships, Park Board exemplifies Vancouver’s commitment to being a global leader in urban sustainability.
Moreover, the Park Board’s independence from municipal governmentensures it can prioritize the needs and interests of citizens without undue political influence.
Elected by Vancouverites, Park Board Commissioners are accountable solely to the electorate, allowing them to make decisions based on evidence, community input, and long-term vision rather than short-term political expediency.
This autonomy is fundamental in safeguarding the integrity and effectiveness of the Park Board’s operations, ensuring that it remains a trusted steward of public resources and a champion of citizen well-being.
The Park Board serves as a forum for civic engagement and participatory democracy, providing citizens with a platform to voice their concerns, aspirations, and ideas for the city’s parks and recreational amenities.
Through public consultations, advisory committees, and community engagement initiatives, it fosters a culture of collaboration and co-creation, where residents are actively involved in shaping the future of their neighbourhoods. This bottom-up approach not only enhances the legitimacy of Park Board decisions but also fosters a sense of ownership and pride among Vancouverites in their public spaces.
Vancouver’s elected, independentPark Board is an indispensable institution that serves to enrich the lives of citizens living in every neighbourhood across our city, while strengthening the social, environmental, and cultural fabric of Vancouver.
Through its stewardship of parks and green spaces, promotion of inclusive recreation, advocacy for sustainability, and commitment to participatory democracy, Vancouver’s much cherished, invaluable, independentBoard of Parks & Recreation embodies the values of livability, equity, and environmental stewardship.
As the city continues to evolve and grow, the Park Board’s role in shaping a more vibrant, resilient, and equitable Vancouver remains as vital as ever.
Note. The preceding text was generated in the ChatGPT AI chatbot, in response to the question, “Why is the elected, independent Vancouver Park Board essential to the citizens of Vancouver, British Columbia?” What you read above is ChatGPT’s response. If artificial intelligence can determine the value of Vancouver Park Board, why is it the human intelligence of the members of Vancouver City Council — without mandate to abolish our elected Park Board — cannot?
Vancouver’s West End in the 1960s, a comfortable family neighbourhood next to Stanley Park
In the 1960s, when Vancouver was still very much a village rather than the thriving metropolis we know it to be today, in those near soporific, pre-movement times, rare was the occasion when the citizens of our fine city got up on their hind legs to protest the status quo or what seemed like the inevitable, as wealthy old men of circumstance wrought change unchallenged, untrammelled by reflection.
Tom ‘Not So Terrific’ Campbell, controversial Vancouver Mayor, in office from 1966 to 1972
Such was the case in 1971, when Vancouver Mayor Tom Campbell and his Non-Partisan Association Council cohorts decided that the time had come to develop the Coal Harbour site at the entrance to Stanley Park, cherished green space of long duration, but not much longer if Mr. Campbell — and the provincial government, led by 17-years-in-power Socred Premier W.A.C. Bennett — had their way.
The Coal Harbour site, owned by Harbour Park Developments, a politically connected local group with strong ties to the Non-Partisan Association, developer Tom Campbell — who in 1966 ran for Mayor as an independent, and won — and the Socred government, first unveiled their development plans in 1965.
The Four Seasons Hotel chain came forward in 1965 with a $40-million development plan on the Coal Harbour waterfront. The initial plan would house 3,000 people in three 30-storey buildings, including a 13-storey hotel and townhouses.
Over time, the development plan was expanded into an unheard of at the time $55-million massive multi-tower plan, with 15 apartment towers, ranging from 15 to 31 storeys set to be constructed on the then green space, a veritable high-rise forest along the Georgia Street causeway entrance to Stanley Park.
As you might well expect, the massive tower development plan for the 14-acre Coal Harbour waterfront site turned into a contentious issue that lasted for years and years, causing increasing numbers of people to rise up in adversarial opposition. The public wanted the site preserved as green space. Developers, Tom Campbell, the Non-Partisan Association, and the Social Credit government had other ideas.
Each week, for years, the community rose up in high dudgeon.
After all, the West End at the time was a single family dwelling neighbourhood, the tallest structure in Vancouver was the Marine Building on Burrard Street.
In 1966, each weekend for the first couple of months, a rag tag group of community activists — who came to include a young storefront lawyer, Mike Harcourt, and Darlene Marzari, an employee of the City — protested on the deserted site. Over time, their numbers grew to five hundred, and then a thousand, rising up in protest and stark and strident opposition to development plans for the cherished green space.
Vancouver City Councillor and then Mayor, Art Phillips; Councillors Walter Hardwick and Harry Rankin
In 1968, a reform-minded Art Phillips and his friend, Walter Hardwick — an Urban Planning professor at UBC, and a community leader whose work would come to shape the city and Metro Vancouver region — ran for Vancouver City Council under the banner of a civic party they had created, The Electors’ Action Movement (TEAM), securing two seats on City Council, joining a young lawyer by the name of Harry Rankin, who had been elected to Council in 1966, sitting in sole opposition to the developer-friendly Non-Partisan Association City Council of the day.
Throughout their campaign for office in 1968, both Art Phillips and Dr. Hardwick stated their clear opposition to the Harbour Parks Development / Four Seasons plan for the green space at the entrance to Stanley Park, standing with the community, and with Vancouver City Councillor Harry Rankin. Would community opposition to the Coal Harbour development plan, in ever increasing numbers, carry the day?
Only the continued opposition of Vancouver citizens could and would tell the tale.
A model of the Harbour Park Developments proposal for the entrance to Stanley Park. The $55-million development would have constructed 15 high-rise towers. Photo: Selwyn Pullan / PostMedia
By the early spring of 1971, hundreds of community activists gathered each weekend on the Coal Harbour site at the entrance to Stanley Park, in protest.
June 7, 1971. All Seasons Park after squatters reclaimed the site. Photo credit: Vancouver Sun
On May 29th, 1971, seventy community activists (hippies they were called by the press) took matters into their own hands, ripping down a fence surrounding the site, storming onto the Coal Harbour waterfront site to plant maple trees, setting up a camp of tents and ramshackle huts, the protest squat sustaining for a year, each subsequent weekend joined by hundreds and hundreds of concerned, mostly young, Vancouver citizens, at what was now called All Seasons Park.
September 23, 1971. An A-frame squatter’s shack in All Seasons Park. Photo: Ross Kenward / PostMedia
In early 1972, bowing to public pressure, a combative Tom Campbell announced there would be a plebiscite on the Four Seasons development, but that only property owners could vote.
This was roundly denounced at a public meeting on June 21, when urban planner Setty Pendakur dubbed the project “the biggest abortion in the history of development in Canada.” Pendakur said the development would create traffic chaos at the entrance to Stanley Park, that Council was confusing people with its plebiscite.
Property owners voted to reject the Four Seasons proposal by 51%. Then the federal government stepped in. On February 10, 1972, Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s government killed the proposal by withholding the transfer of a crucial water lot.
1972. Alderman Harry Rankin talking to activists at All Seasons Park. Photo: Gord Croucher / PostMedia
With a new Mayor and majority progressive T.E.A.M. (The Electors’ Action Movement) Council voted into office in 1972 by a public eager for change, led by Mayor Art Phillips, with Walter Hardwick, Darlene Marzari, Mike Harcourt and Setty Pendakur securing seats on, perhaps, Vancouver’s most progressive Council ever, in November 1973, the City of Vancouver bought the entire site for $6.4 million.
The green space at the entrance to Stanley Park is now known as Devonian Harbour Park, but for some of us, it will always be All Seasons Park.
Some historical source material for this article provided by Vancouver Sun reporter John Mackie.
There is a correlation to be drawn between the movement leading to the defeat years ago of the Harbour Park Development project at the entrance to Stanley Park — championed by the City Council of the day — and the movement opposition of, now, 200 informed citizens (and more) who gathered at City Hall two weeks ago, and again this past Monday evening to state their opposition to the initiative of the Ken Sim-led ABC Vancouver City Council to eliminate Vancouver’s cherished, 135-year-old, independent and elected Board of Parks and Recreation.
Movements start off small, with generally only a few of our better informed citizens coming to the fore to state their opposition.
As time passes, more of our citizens become informed, inform themselves, taking the power to change for the better into their own hands, to rise up for the better, to work in common cause with friends and neighbours who share their concern to, in time, elect a more democratically-minded local government committed to the livability of our beloved city.
What is it with men who lack humility, intellectual heft, or have little character and no experience, and their unwholesome mistreatment of women?
In the case of Mayor Ken Sim, perhaps there is a partial answer to the multiple questions above, deriving from Mr. Sim’s use of the word “swagger”.
Social media response to former Park Board Chairperson, Anita Romaniuk
A Definition of Swagger
Pompous, arrogant, boastful. An insolent braggart, and from the definition of insolent: disrespectful, rude, insulting in manner and speech, and deviant.
Swagger. Think: that jerk on the beach in a too small swimsuit who believes he’s God’s gift to women, who moves with a near drunken stagger, on the prowl for a victim of his all-too-visible misogyny and disdain for women, a man who is lacking in fidelity of purpose, and a little man devoid of empathy, and humanity.
Mayor Ken Sim, the next time he uses the word swagger, think: misogynist, arrogant, pompous, lacking in character, intellect and empathy, boastful, braggart, rude, scornful, with no conscience.
Under the current provincial Police Act, the Mayor of Vancouver upon election becomes the de facto Chairperson of the Vancouver Police Board.
Faye Wightman led several high-profile agencies before Solicitor General Mike Farnworth appointed Ms. Wightman, a well-respected and accomplished member of our community, to the Vancouver Police Board, in September 2020.
In past years, dating back to 1990, Ms. Wightman served as CEO of the Vancouver Foundation, CEO of B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation, vice-president of the University of Victoria, Board Chair ofInspire Health, and interim CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, appointed as a B.C. Housing Commissioner, and Coast Capital Savings Executive Director.
“The Vancouver Police Board is guided by the values of independence, fairness, objectivity and accountability in all that it does,” Faye Wightman wrote in a statement she issued last week, following her resignation from the Police Board. “I believe Police Board Chair Ken Sim, and certain directors of the Board have lost sight of these key values, and I resigned.”
Faye Wightman’s departure comes less than a year after Police Board member Rachel Roy resigned in June 2023. Stephanie Johanssen also lost her job as Executive Director in November 2022, after serving three years and seven months in the role. Note should be made that Ms. Johanssen’s departure came the same month Mr. Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority Council were sworn into office.
From Mike Howell’s Glacier Media story: “The Vancouver Police Board won’t say why its Executive Director Stephanie Johanssen (far right) is no longer on the job.” File photo Mike Howell.
In a follow-up interview with Glacier Media’s Mike Howell, Ms. Wightman states …
“If the Board is comprised of directors who have a professional reliance on the City of Vancouver for funding, or on maintaining a positive relationship with the Mayor, who also chairs the Police Board, then their objectivity is compromised,” Ms. Wightman said in her statement.
“That is the case with two of our directors at the [police board] and it was becoming clear they were in a position of conflict.”
Ms. Wightman also named Trevor Ford, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, when asked about her allegation of interference from Mayor Ken Sim’s staff.
“[Trevor Ford] came to an in-camera meeting, he phoned and directed Board members to fire the Executive Director,” Ms. Wightman alleged in the interview.
“He sat in on one-on-one meetings that the Mayor had with individual Board members. If that’s not political interference, I’m not sure what is.”
Vancouver Police Board Executive Director Stephanie Johanssen, Board member Rachel Roy and now Faye Wightman, who has stated that “Ken Sim, from the outset and throughout our tenure together on the Police Board repeatedly asked for my resignation.”
Gone.
Harassment of Ms. Wightman? Political inference from the Mayor’s Chief of Staff in the firing of Police Board Executive Director, Stephanie Johannsen?
VanRamblings, in reading Ms. Wightman’s statement, believes so, yes.
Readers. Do you notice a pattern?
Could it be that Mayor Ken Sim demanded the resignation of the three strong women of accomplishment written about above because Vancouver’s current Mayor finds strong women of character, integrityand accomplishment threatening, and as such they must be excised from his circle of influence?
Not to worry, though.
Although B.C. Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has been uncharacteristically silent following the resignation of Ms. Wightman as his chosen appointee to the Vancouver Police Board, fear not …
Premier David Eby in his GlobalBC interview on Police Act reforms, states …
“I understand there’s some concern in Vancouver right now. The reforms (to the Police Act) are clearly needed. We’ll be working with local governments, and with police and the public in terms of the changes that are coming forward. The Solicitor General’s office is working on it right now.”
GlobalBC reporter Catherine Urquhart ends her report, stating …
“Legislation changing the Police Act to remove Mayors from police boards is expected to come as early as the spring session.”
British Columbia Solicitor General Mike Farnworth keeping his powder dry. Buh-bye, Mayor Ken Sim.
Solicitor General Farnworth’s silence thus far = revenge is a dish best served cold.
Despair reigns across our land, as the inexorable move towards the dissolution of an independent, elected Park Board proceeds relentlessly, calamitously forward.
In today’s VanRamblings post, we’ll attempt to reason why Mayor Ken Sim and his super majority ABC Vancouver team of City Councillors arrived at the decision to eliminate the 133-year-old Vancouver Park Board, the role the administration of the David Eby government will play, why the provincial government supports the seemingly arbitrary initiative of the Mayor, and why we believe that it is inevitable that in months, Vancouver’s beloved, elected Park Board will fade into history.
On an episode of the Air Quotes Media podcast, Hotel Pacifico, that aired just before Christmas, former Vancouver City Councillor / Chief of Staff to Premier John Horgan , Geoff Meggs, posited that the move to abolish the Vancouver Park Board was part of a dastardly plot by B.C. United Party leader Kevin Falcon.
Apparently, Mr. Falcon had convinced the Mayor and his ABC Vancouver Councillors — all of whom are members and supporters of B.C. United — that a move to eliminate the elected Park Board would create discord within David Eby’s New Democratic Party caucus, heading into this year’s October 19th provincial election.
Vancouver’s 9 duly-elected New Democrat Party Members of the Legislature in Victoria
Given the likelihood many in the NDP caucus would be opposed to the Mayor’s initiative to have the provincial government amend the Vancouver Charter to allow the dissolution of an elected Park Board — a move that could jeopardize the re-election chances of many of the New Democratic Party government’s Vancouver-based members of the legislature — working hand in hand, Kevin Falcon and Ken Sim devised a plan to turn the tables on the re-election chances of Vancouver’s NDP MLA’s, which very much includes Premier David Eby himself, who is in his 11th year as the elected representative in the riding of Vancouver Point Grey.
Geoff Meggs, Vancouver City Councillor 2008 – 2017 | Chief of Staff to Premier John Horgan, 2017 – 2022
Alas. As much as VanRamblings enjoys a good conspiracy theory, in point of fact, privately, Mr. Meggs was telling his intimates that he had proposed the Kevin Falcon “theory” arising from his concern that, given the polling that has the NDP riding high in the polls and seemingly undefeatable, he is concerned that NDP supporters very well may not volunteer at their MLA’s campaign offices once the writ is dropped this upcoming September, and further that New Democratic Party voters will stay home, and not vote at the advance polls or cast a ballot on election day.
Every vote counts. New Democratic Party supporters will have to work as hard as ever in the lead up to, and during the course of British Columbia’s 43rd provincial election, if we wish to ensure the re-election of the David Eby NDP government.
Mayor Ken Sim announces Park Board transition working group
The story of the decision of the Ken Sim-led majority ABC Vancouver administration to eliminate Vancouver’s independent, elected Park Board goes back to March of last year, when Premier David Eby made a proposal to Vancouver’s Mayor to move B.C. Place from its current home adjacent to Rogers Arena to Hastings Park.
While it is true that David Eby has stated that it is probable his government will spend between $300 and $400 million dollars on a renovation of B.C. Place to meet the requirements of the bodies bringing the Invictus Games to British Columbia in 2025, and the FIFA World Cup to Vancouver in 2026, in fact reliable sources have told VanRamblings that the long term plans for B.C. Place involves moving the aging stadium to Hastings Park, over which the City of Vancouver has jurisdiction.
As you might well expect, development and growth — and an expansion of our transit system — is at the heart of the decision by the Premier.
In addition, in eliminating the independent, elected Park Board, ABC Vancouver’s financial backers’ fondest wishes will be realized, as whole tracts of previous park / open green space will be available for development, to build, build, build …
And, of course, the mega-developer Aquilini family is very much involved, as well.
Here’s the plan: a David Eby government would work closely with the members of Vancouver City Council, and the Aquilini development corporation, to redevelop the B.C. Place site where, conceivably, the 7 hectare / 17-acre site would become home to three or more 70-to-95 storey towers in a newly designated “downtown village”, providing more than 3,000 residential condominium units in what will soon become, as planned, the heart of the downtown core of Vancouver.
The monies derived from the sale of the 3,000 luxury condominium units — in which the government would co-develop the B.C. Place site with the Aqualini family, where the completed condominium units would sell for up to $125 million on the top floors, many of the condominium units sold offshore, with the provincial government realizing billions of dollars in profit — would not only pay for the construction of a new stadium on the race track grounds at Hastings Park — a covenant prevents the construction of housing at Hastings Park, but not a sports facility — but for a new light rail system, as well, from Vancouver’s city core, along Hastings, down Renfrew to McGill / Hastings Park, and over to the North Shore.
Park Board transition working group: Catherine Evans, Gregor Young, Jordan Nijjar, Shauna Wilton, Jennifer Wood
The person on the left in the photo above is Catherine Evans, former Library Board Chair, Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, most recently the senior constituency assistant in federal MP Joyce Murray’s Vancouver Quadra office, and although Ms. Evans is a card carrying member of the federal Liberal Party, provincially she is a staunch supporter of David Eby, and his NDP administration in Victoria.
In the past, Catherine Evans has worked on David’s Eby’s campaigns for office and, in fact, on E-Day, while working in Mr. Eby’s campaign office, has been VanRamblings’ no nonsense Get Out The Vote “boss”.
A story — a digression and and an aside — to help explain why Catherine Evans has joined Mayor Ken Sim’s Park Board Transition Working Group.
George Puil, 14 years as a Park Board Commissioner, then for 26 years, a Vancouver City Councillor
In 2001, B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Campbell won an overwhelming victory at the polls, securing 77 of 79 seats in the Legislature, leaving the NDP with two seats: Joy McPhail in Vancouver Hastings, and Jenny Kwan in Vancouver Mount Pleasant.
As is always the case with a change of government, there are 5,000 or more positions to be filled by the winning party’s supporters, with positions on college and university boards, regulatory authorities, as well as Crown agencies and commissions, and much more. Having retired from his job as an educator at Kitsilano Secondary School, and after 40 years in elected office, Mr. Puil — a man of experience, and a mentor to Gordon Campbell — following his ignominious defeat at the polls in the 2002 Vancouver municipal election, found himself at loose ends.
Within six months of taking office, Premier Gordon Campbell appointed his good friend George Puil to three regulatory bodies in his government, not requiring too much from Mr. Puil in respect of time, certainly much less time than had long been the case when Mr. Puil sat as a Vancouver City Councillor. Annual compensation for these “out of the public eye” regulatory bodies came in at $250,000, a pretty penny that came in addition to Mr. Puil’s healthy teachers’ pension.
Catherine Evans, one of the loveliest persons of VanRamblings’ acquaintance
As Ms. Evans lives in VanRamblings neighbourhood, we run across one another frequently, and chat volubly and at length about the state of the world, and more often than not federal politics (as it happens, VanRamblings is a Justin Trudeau fan).
If you know David Eby, you know that he likes to have “his people” in place — thus, Ms. Evans’ placement on Mayor Sim’s Park Board transition working group. David Eby wants a close eye kept on the machinations of that contentious Park Board working group.
In our various conversations, Ms. Evans has made it clear — arising from a tragic personal circumstance — that she wants out of politics, has no interest in seeking political office, and would find solace and peace travelling with her husband to various locales across the globe, far away from the political maelstrom.
Why has Catherine Evans joined Mayor Ken Sim’s Park Board transition working group? Quite simply, because her good friend David Eby asked her to.
To know Catherine Evans — who is exceptionally bright, one of the strongest, most principled and hardest working women we know — is to know that her role as a low key change maker for the better is how she brings herself to the world.
Enter David Eby, who should he be re-elected to government in October, will set as a priority the appointment of his confidante Catherine Evans to the provincial bodies of her choice, where she can make a difference, out of the public eye, compensated fairly for her contribution, and for her many many gifts.
The word VanRamblings is hearing out of Victoria is that David Eby will not move forward this spring on the request of ABC Vancouver to amend the Vancouver Charter, to eliminate an independent, elected Vancouver Park Board.
Which means that those of us who love the Vancouver Park Board, live Park Board deep in our soul, and cherish Park Board, although we have our work cut out for us this next year, we may have an outside chance of moving the David Eby government away from making the fatal decision to dissolve the Vancouver Park Board.
