Today, VanRamblings offers an up close view of last evening’s raucous, entertaining and informative Last Candidate Standing campaign event, now in its 6th year. We’ve edited coverage of the event down to approximately 75 minutes, from the four and half hours of the actual event.
Watch the video — it’s not only fun, it’ll provide you with some insight as to why to vote for must-elect candidates for Vancouver City Council: Pete Fry & Derrick O’Keefe, Christine Boyle & Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe (who we think is doing an incredibly wonderful job on the campaign trail), and a handful of other City Council aspirants (think: Tanya Paz & Catherine Evans) who have acquitted themselves well throughout the campaign season.
The independents held their own Wednesday at Last Candidate Standing.
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- Graham Cook — a progressive, a Project Manager at a local tech company, and a volunteer board member with the Huntington Society of Canada who holds a BBA in Finance from Simon Fraser University;;
- Françoise Raunet, a public school teacher, a life-long social justice advocate, a peace, labour and environmental activist, and a mom “trying to raise two kids in an increasingly unaffordable city”; and
- Abubaker Khan, a third-year sociology student at UBC who hosts a podcast called The Chosen One, which tackles social issues, including mental health, isolation, addiction, racism, and homelessness..
Of course, as you’ll see on the video, independent Mayoral candidate Shauna Sylvester knocked it out of the park.
- In fact, Ms. Sylvester … well, you’ll just have to watch the video above to see who emerged victorious on Wednesday at the terrifically inspiring and revealing Last Candidate Standing election forum event.The heading of today’s VanRamblings column?Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that we believe there is, as we wrote on our Facebook page last evening …
… an extraordinary, lovely (am I allowed to say that?) candidate for Vancouver City Council, who is the only candidate in our current election to talk about “toxic masculinity” (last Friday, the day after Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the U.S. Senate, I had nearly two dozen conversations with women who were triggered by the heartless cruelty of the Republican senators, and the entitled cry-baby — because he’s finally being held to account — Brett Kavanagh, who themselves had been the recipient of unwanted attention from men, spanning the spectrum of men’s bad behaviour). Electing Christine Boyle to Vancouver City Council October 20 is one sure way we can all fight back against toxic masculinity.
At the advance polls (Oct. 10 – 17), or on election day, October 20, please #VoteForChristineBoyle, the second name on the Councillor ballot (BOYLE, Christine), and the candidate who is first in our collective civic heart. Hey, her parents think so, too — as well as her entire family, and all her friends, and absolutely anyone who has ever met Christine Boyle.
Christine was saying to me last evening she’s concerned that she might disappoint me at some point should she elected to Council. Impossible.
I love my 41-year-old daughter, Megan — nothing, but nothing has ever disappointed me about the brightest, toughest, feminist woman I’ve every met — and lucky me, I got to be around this absolutely stunning figure of warmth and humanity, the entire time she was growing up.
The same is true, for me, about #ChristineBoyle.
I trust Christine’s judgment innately and to the core of my being (as I do that of my daughter). Some — very few — folks are transcendent and very good people. Christine is one of the good ones.
After being told two years ago, upon being diagnosed with cancer and informed I had weeks to live, I am glad to be alive, and these past months to have been afforded the opportunity to become aware of Christine Boyle for City Council.
I promise you that Christine Boyle will never disappoint you. I know, it places a lot of pressure — perhaps even a burden — on Christine’s shoulders, my writing that, and much else that I have written in support of her necessary candidacy for Vancouver City Council … but Christine is very much her own person, she knows herself — and no matter how much I may extol her many virtues on these pages in the coming days, weeks and months, she will always do what she thinks is the right thing to do — for me, and it should be for you, too — that’s good enough.
Tonight is a busy night on the campaign trail — with advance polls opening a mere six days from how, and election day only 16 days away.
The definitive Vancouver School Board candidate forum at Sir Charles Tupper School, and on the other side of town, the Van Dusen Garden Vancouver Park Board event for those running to be a Commissioner on the next Park Board … well, what to do, what to do?
- Vancouver School Board All-Candidates Forum
Vancouver Park Board All-Candidates Forum
