In the video above, newly-elected OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle says near the end of her victory speech …
“This is a pretty split Council. A pretty split body at every level. We are not going to move things easily without a lot of pressure from outside. We will continue you to need you to put that pressure on …”
With all due respect to Ms. Boyle, VanRamblings finds her remarks to the crowd of well-wishers and campaign volunteers at Saturday’s election night party to be not only ungenerous on a night of celebration for all the candidates who were victorious, and all the other candidates who ran campaigns of conscience, but to also be untrue & needlessly provocative.
Not to mention, just plain wrong & unbecoming of who we know her to be.
And while we’re at it, may we also add: dismissive of the humanity and integrity of her fellow newly electeds to Vancouver City Council — there’s nothing like passing judgment on people you’ve never met, we always say.
What a damn poor way to begin her tenure as a Vancouver City Councillor.
Whether Christine Boyle realizes it or not: Adriane Carr is a progressive who means well for our city.
Pete Fry is one of the humblest, most outstanding person of conscience and character we have ever met and worked with.
Melissa De Genova — for all that she is dismissed and demeaned in the ugly miasma that is Vancouver politics, by her own party and others, including in Ms. Boyle’s worrisome and intemperate remarks above — means well for our city, is far more progressive than she is given credit for, and is an elected who long ago earned our deep respect and admiration.
Jean Swanson = split Council? Uh, no.
Michael Wiebe ran, by far, the best and most expansive, not to mention, the most energized campaign of any of the candidates seeking office in the 2018 Vancouver civic election cycle, and was elected to office because he, too, is a person of conscience who means well for our city.
Now you know, given that we spoke or otherwise communicated with newly-elected Councillor Boyle most days over the past six months, Christine Boyle might well have asked us of our informed assessment of the victorious candidates whose names appear above and below.
Newly-elected Councillor Boyle chose to do so. Why not? Oh, we could offer speculative reasons. Perhaps haughtiness on the part of Ms. Boyle, that she did not seek our counsel on those persons with whom she will now be employed as the people’s civic representative at City Hall the next 4 years?
Whatever the case, by the intemperate remarks made during her election night speech, Ms. Boyle has done damage (not irreparable damage, but damage nonetheless) to her near nascent term on Vancouver City Council, not to mention the damage she has unconsciously perpetrated on the well-meaning persons of conscience with whom she soon will be sitting at the circular table inside Council chambers at Vancouver City Hall.
Lisa Dominato, recent Vancouver School Board trustee, a person of conscience, and an accomplished woman of substance and political élan, Rebecca Bligh who, as we have written of her previously, just knocks our socks off and represents only one of two diversity City Councillors elected on Saturday evening, October 20th, and …
Sarah Kirby-Yung, whose “win” on Saturday night fills us with so much hope for our future that we are near to bursting.
A split Council, Ms. Boyle?
Not on your life. Your fellow Councillors represent accomplished women (8 WOMEN City Councillors — it is to weep with joy — women of conscience who, working with she and Mayor-elect Kennedy Stewart, WILL build the city we need). Does Ms. Boyle honestly think that the five Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillors are going to oppose an affordable housing plan that includes co-and-co-op housing, and social housing built on City land, and federal and provincial Crown land? They’d be pretty nasty people if they did — nothing we know of at least four of the elected NPA Councillors would suggest them to be anything other than supporters of Vancouver City Hall’s gender variant policy, indigenous reconciliation strategy, women’s equity strategy, and who would stand foresquare, shoulder to shoulder with Ms. Boyle to support initiatives that oppose hate speech and conduct, and who would be anything less than supportive of environmental initiatives. Naïve, you say? That allegation was bandied about quite a bit during the election campaign, targeted to both Ms. Boyle & VanRamblings. Tch, tch. Nope ain’t havin’ any of it. No siree, Jane & Bob.
Published the first time VanRamblings met Christine Boyle, back in March, at a COPE coalition exploratory meeting. We were inspired by her then, we’re still inspired by her
VanRamblings knows something about Christine Boyle she seems not to know about herself …
This past six months, Christine Boyle was a transformational candidate for civic office, and as an elected City Councillor, as a conciliator, as a person of conscience, as an inspirational figure on City Council who will not be denied, as the single individual on our new City Council best able to articulate what we all believe — and that includes her fellow newly-elected City Councillors — knows what must come to pass, she will find support.
Together, newly-elected Vancouver City Councillors Christine Boyle, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Pete Fry, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Rebecca Bligh, Adriane Carr, Lisa Dominato, Melissa De Genova and perhaps even Councillor Colleen Hardwick will, as we have written previously about Councillor Boyle, become just as smitten with our newly-elected OneCity Vancouver City Councillor as every other person who has ever met her — and who will come to feel compelled by this entirely tremendous catalyst of change for the better, on our incoming, progressive and change-making City Council.
Yes, in time, they too, these newly-electeds or returned-to-office City Councillors, will come to see within her what VanRamblings knows exists within her: that, as is the case with her very special and meaningful for our city fellow newly-electeds, Christine Boyle is a good person, a person who means well for our city, who will be a participant in the process of helping all of her fellow electeds realize their dreams for achieving the city we need, the city we need for all of us.
