Published the first time I met Christine Boyle, back on March 11th of this year, at a COPE coalition exploratory meeting. I was inspired by her then, I am inspired by her still

And the corollary to the question in the headline, asked after publishing my critical of Christine Boyle October 21st column on VanRamblings, “What’s happened between you and Christine Boyle?”
In both cases the answer is, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
A Personal, Not a Political, Journal
Today on VanRamblings I am going to set about to answer in some detail and at some length the questions posed above, asked of me hundreds of times over the past six months. In the process, I will write about how I came to know about the existence of Christine, from whence my support of her nascent political candidacy arose, and why I thought it important to champion Christine Boyle’s candidacy for Vancouver City Council.
I want to set the record straight. Contrary to the allegations that have been leveled at me for almost six months now, I am neither “obsessed” nor “infatuated” with Councillor-elect Boyle — notions I find to be contemptuous and demeaning, both of me and Ms. Boyle’s six month’s long candidacy for office. I categorically reject any notion that my writing of Ms. Boyle candidacy as having arisen from anything other than a heartfelt belief, based on 55+ years in the political fray, that Christine Boyle — as I have written many, many times, represents anything other than the finest candidate for office of which I have become aware in my lifetime. Full stop.

HISTORY
As is the case with many of you, and as was the case with the vast majority of voters, and members of Vancouver’s fourth estate, eight months ago, I was completely unaware of the existence of Christine Boyle. I consider myself quite plugged into the realpolitik of Vancouver — even so, Christine Boyle was nowhere on my radar.
The first time I became aware of Christine Boyle was in early March 2018.
It would seem I had “friended” her on Facebook, although I have no conscious memory of doing so — because, I mean, who was Christine Boyle? Best I can figure is that I confused Ms. Boyle with Christine Ackerman, a former West End Residents Association community activist. You know, “Christine’s” – they’re all alike, and meld into one another.
So, there I am heading home on the #9 bus one early Sunday afternoon, after church and dim sum brunch with Councillor-elect Colleen Hardwick and her husband, Garry (and after visiting Bed, Bath & Beyond, a regular Sunday afternoon haunt of mine), looking at my Facebook timeline, when what do I see: Christine Boyle announcing her candidacy for a nomination for Council with OneCity Vancouver. Big deal, right? Except …
No sooner does this Christine Boyle person announce her candidacy for nomination for Vancouver City Council than 40 Facebook friends respond in a flood of congratulations and well wishes — forty persons whom I know and have worked with, from across the political spectrum, each “friend” more excited about Ms. Boyle’s candidacy than the previous commenter, the flood of supportive commentary turning from flood into a deluge.
Interesting, I thought. Twenty minutes later, this Christine Boyle person publishes a follow-up Facebook post, announcing her Christine Boyle for City Council Facebook group. Twenty minutes after that this Christine Boyle, a complete unknown to me, published another Facebook post, a link to her brand spanking new candidate website page. “Now there’s a professional roll out of a campaign for office,” I thought to myself. Very interesting. After which I promptly forgot about Christine Boyle — I had invited a friend for dinner, and had preparations to make.

The next time I became aware of Christine Boyle was one week later, at COPE’s March 11th AGM, at the Russian Hall. The COPE Executive had requested that OneCity Vancouver and the Green Party of Vancouver each send a representative to COPE’s AGM to address COPE members on the potential for a coalition of left-of-centre parties (Vision Vancouver was not invited to participate in the coalition discussion).
Christine Boyle arrived as the OneCity rep, and a little late as the Greens were holding their own AGM that afternoon, a breathless Pete Fry arrived.
If you’ve ever attended a COPE meeting, you know that they’re boisterous, out-of-control affairs, with competing (often loud) voices vying for attention, with little in the way of focused discussion.

Christine Boyle’s time soon arose to speak to those gathered downstairs in The Russian Hall, and the strangest thing happened. As soon as Ms. Boyle began to speak, the room went silent. In 40 years of attending COPE meetings, I’ve never seen anything like it. Christine Boyle held the meeting in thrall — unprecedented at COPE meetings, particularly AGMs.
Christine Boyle spoke for three minutes, and then announced she had to leave to “relieve the child care worker looking after my son.”
Because I knew that I’d be writing about the upcoming Vancouver civic election, I decided to approach Ms. Boyle as she was leaving the room.

I approached Ms. Boyle just outside of the door well leading into the hallway outside of the meeting room, and asked if I might speak with her. Ms. Boyle, as calm and centred as anyone could be, simply said, “Yes.” I introduced myself, and told her I’d be writing about the election, and would appreciate the opportunity to speak with her at some point down the road when she was not quite so busy as today. Ms. Boyle agreed to that meeting. For the record, that proposed meeting never took place.
Take a look at the picture above. Keep it in your mind.

Some years ago, I was returning from lunch with my daughter who, at the time, lived in Richmond. A bit past one o’clock on an early spring afternoon, I was secluded inside my tinpot American made car, waiting for the light at 57th and Oak to change, as I headed back to work. In front of me in her car, a young mother, her two young children securely fastened in their car seats in the back seat of the car. In front of the young family directly in front of me, a middle-aged man in a suit waiting for the red light to change.
I had the radio on, all seemed well with the world, and being a driver of integrity, as one is supposed to do every eight seconds, I checked the rear view mirror — and what do I see? A huge boat of a mid-1980s Oldsmobile roaring up Oak Street, the driver of the vehicle looking off in the distance, completely unaware that less than 50 yards in front of him were three stopped vehicles waiting for the light to change.
I leaned on the horn, alerting the woman in front of me, who looked back to see what all the commotion was about — she saw what I saw. My car was about to be rear-ended at high speed by a monster of a car; she secured herself to the drivers wheel, you could almost hear her saying to her children, “Hold on, everything will be fine.”
The horn blaring into the midday surroundings, approximately 10 yards away from my car, the driver of the Oldsmobile finally took notice of my vehicle, at which point a look of horror swept over his face. About five yards away from hitting my vehicle, the man in the Oldsmobile slammed on his brakes, the sound of his car tires screeching.
But it was too late.
Now, you often hear that in accidents, like the one about to occur, time slows down for the accident victim. Prior to this day, I didn’t deny the possibility that happens sometimes, as a means of the human mind dealing with trauma — but I didn’t have any reference point for such an event.
From the moment of impact, time slowed down. The first thing that happened was I was thrust forward, and as I was thrust forward so was my vehicle, which plowed into the car in front of me, as her car made contact with the vehicle in front of hers. All that happened over the next 60 seconds occurred in silence.
As I was thrust forward, my seat belt stopped me from catapulting through the front windshield of my car. I felt the seat belt fasten itself onto my chest, my ribs cracking — although I could neither feel nor hear it, I just knew it was happening. I felt no pain.
I was present in the situation, there was no “out of body” experience — I was smack dab in the middle of this trauma, as the seat belt catapulted me backwards onto my driver’s side car seat. My body was like a pinball, thrust forward, thrust back, thrust forward, thrust back, until I lay prone on the car seat, which was now completely horizontal.
I felt no pain. I felt present. I felt glad to be alive.
Several ambulances arrived only a couple of minutes later. I was carefully extracted from my vehicle, and placed in an ambulance and taken to UBC Hospital. I saw the woman who had been in the car in front of me; she was crying. I saw her children in the arms of two paramedics; the children were fine. I saw the driver who had plowed into us — he looked traumatized, his face ashen. And then to the sound of ambulance and fire engine sirens screaming through the air, I was taken from the scene of the accident.
Why am I telling you this story? What relevance could it possibly have to the “saga” of Christine Boyle, and VanRamblings? I want you to recall what I wrote above of “time slowing down”, of the silence that attended the accident, and of being “present” for all that occurred.
I also want you to hold in your mind, the picture of the beach, and the ocean and the sun, in the photo above. I want you to hold out the possibility that all does not occur as we expect it might, that sometimes the unexpected occurs, and we find ourselves transported.
End of digression

The person on the far left in the navy blue sweater? That’d be me, Raymond Neil Tomlin.

The next time I wrote about Christine Boyle was on April 20th on VanRamblings, six months out from the 2018 Vancouver civic election. The next time I saw Christine Boyle was at David Eby’s TownHall, where Ms. Boyle spoke. I made only a brief, in passing acknowledgment of her presence at the TownHall, where I was a volunteer co-ordinator that day.

David Eby, Housing Townhall, Hellenic Centre, June 6, 2018 | Photos credit, Elvira Lount

From April 20th until October 18th, when I formally endorsed Christine Boyle for Vancouver City Council, I wrote about her every single day, more often than not with only a passing reference — in all those months, there was not a day when Christine Boyle’s candidacy was not mentioned on VanRamblings, or in my social media feeds.
Why?
Because, as I’ve written many, many times, I know — it’s not that I just think, or believe, or kinda wish — that Christine Boyle is the single most important candidate to be elected to Vancouver City Council, not just in my lifetime, but (and I know this, as well) in the entire 132-year history of the political governance in the city of Vancouver. I believe that. I know that.
Poppycock! Is that what I hear you say? “You’re infatuated with that woman.” Is that what you, and so many others, are telling me? “Stop, Raymond — you’re being naïve, you’re being foolish. You’re compromising yourself. Your conduct is unseemly. Stop it. Stop it now!”
Allow me to respond to the infatuation charge. I am a 68-year-old man with two adult children. A serious, and my public persona to the contrary, and a quiet man. I do not, and have not ever, believed in the notion of infatuation. I’ll tell you why.
In the early years of my marriage, I suppose I may have been seen to be infatuated with my wife, Cathy.

Around the time the picture of Cathy and I was taken in the summer of 1972, one morning I awoke, and as usual I looked over at her, still asleep. I kept looking at her, and thought to myself, “I don’t know who this woman is. I know almost nothing about her. For two years, it has been us and only us. We have spent so much time making love that we have never taken the time to get to know one another.” And that was true.
The next few years of our lives were spent with Cathy and I getting to know one another. And the more we knew about one another, the more we came to not like the other very much. Oh sure, we were a couple. We travelled together, lived our lives together — but over time, we came to see that our respective values differed. Cathy was a child of privilege, her mother a Southam — her politics conservative, class-based and dominated by wealth and white privilege. Me, I was a working class boy who grew up in poverty, who had somehow found his way into university, and two undergraduate degrees, and a post-graduate degree. I was then, and I am today, a socialist. Cathy remains a woman of privilege. I remain a proud member of the working class, who believes, “Each according to her need.”
Infatuation? That’s a mug’s game. That’s you creating the person in front of you as the person you wish them to be, not the person they are. Infatuation is a lie, and a disservice to honesty and integrity of person.
Infatuation? Obsession? To me, both smack of, and are forms, of a mental illness. Let me be very clear: I see the world clearly, and I despair. I am respectful in my relations with all the people in my life, and with everyone who comes into my orbit.
In an election just past that was the ugliest election I have ever covered or participated in. In an election that was, more than anything else, a #MeToo Backlash woman-hating election, the notion that I would somehow engage in conduct that would compromise the integrity of anyone, never mind a woman of conscience and probity, who is happily married with two children, who is years younger than my daughter Megan — a woman with whom I have found myself in the same room only four times in seven months, speaking with her only twice, for those who attribute ill motive to me in my political support of Christine Boyle, all I can ask is: really?

Do you see the Facebook post above. It represents the least worst thing I saw written about Christine Boyle during the course of Vancouver’s civic election. The Facebook post appeared 36 hours after the October 3rd Last Candidate Standing event at The Imperial on Main Street. As I did throughout the election period, dating back months, I immediately intervened with the woman who had posted derogatory comments about a candidate in the election with whom her party had formed an alliance.
I was told I was a white man of privilege, and had no right to criticize a woman of colour (a woman, if truth be told, a feminist, and a very fine writer — usually). If you think I was going to leave it at that, you don’t know me. I spent the next 24 hours making behind the scenes arrangements to have that post taken down, and have the party that championed that post reined in and stopped in the latter two weeks of the campaign from engaging in such destructive nonsense.

Graphic posted by me on Twitter to stop an ongoing visceral attack on Christine Boyle.

There was a group of prominent, privileged white men who spent almost their every waking moment attempting to take Christine Boyle down.
I was having none of it. Between coming to the defense of City Councillor Melissa De Genova — who was the subject of one of the most vicious take down campaigns I have ever witnessed, a campaign of destruction that lasted months — and the daily online social media evisceration of Christine Boyle, I dedicated as much time in coming to the defense of each of these women of accomplishment and integrity, and finding ways to shut down the vicious online commentary, as I did composing posts on VanRamblings.
So now you see the fatal flaw in my personal make-up, don’t you? My defense of both Ms. De Genova and Ms. Boyle arose from a paternalistic concern for each. And that is a terrible thing to admit, particularly in relation to two of the strongest women of my acquaintance, who hardly need intervention from a 68-year-old man who is very much their inferior. But paternalistic concern or no, I’d be damned if I was going to allow an attempt to destroy these two women, and their campaign for office.
Concerning and unseemly as my regular writing about Christine Boyle may have been to some, I was successful in my goal of presenting Christine Boyle to the general public.
Eight months ago, no one knew who Christine Boyle was, outside of her family, and perhaps three or four hundred of her acquaintances and friends. Over the course of six months, I did all in my power — including the near 23,000 unique hits to VanRamblings on the Thursday before the election — to present Christine Boyle to the public.
Because I knew that once they’d heard her voice, once they had met her, heard her speak, read what she writes, and once the 45,455 Vancouver citizens who came to know her, who would come to hold Christine Boyle in high regard, would vote for a woman about whom they knew nothing only months prior, in order that our city would be transformed.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with hilar cholangeocarcinoma, a deadly, rare form of inoperable cancer that steals the lives of all those who are diagnosed with this terminal form of cancer.
At the time I was diagnosed, I wrote about it on Facebook (only sporadically, because I was very ill), and at the request of the publisher of a magazine I’ve had my work published in for almost 23 years now, in this magazine. It was through the recording of my cancer journey in this journal that I met a woman with my diagnosis. While I am here today, she was gone in four painfully excruciating months.
A few years back, my daughter’s best friend, someone I’d known since she was a young girl, quite the kindest and most brilliant young woman you’d ever want to meet, accomplished and lovely, someone who when we spent time together I cherished every minute. At age 29, this young woman had completed her medical degree, and had opened her own office with a group of other doctors. The previous year she had been married, to a man who loved her with all his heart. And soon after that she was with child.
A life full of promise and love, and the most beautiful of soul young woman you could ever hope to meet and have her in your life. Not too long after she became pregnant, she was diagnosed with breast cancer — she chose not to take treatment, lest it compromise the young person to be she carried within her.
Miraculously, her cancer went into remission, her child was born healthy and hearty, her home now filled with the cooing sounds of a happy and content newborn baby.
Six weeks after the birth of her baby, this young woman of my long acquaintance was once again diagnosed with breast cancer, stage four breast cancer this time — within weeks she was gone. To this day, her mother has not recovered from the loss of her beloved daughter.
In 1990, I was asked to help parent a boy of 10, with whom I had a better and more palpable connection and fundamental understanding of than his parents, his teachers or any other person. Dan’s parents saw that, and asked if I might intervene. I asked for the permission of my children to add Dan to our family — and they readily agreed.
Dan was a precocious young man, wise beyond his years, and loved by everyone around him — although he was an idiosyncratic, unconventional & demanding young man, but still a lovely guy. Dan was like another son to me. And that was fine with my son, Jude, because he loved Dan, too.
Dan spent much of his twenties traveling, taking employment in Hollywood or teaching in Taiwan to help fund his adventures exploring the globe. Dan came home to Vancouver every summer, though — it was a blast to spend time with Daniel, for me, for my children, for his family and for his friends.
In early July of 2008, when Daniel was 28 years of age, he arrived home from Taiwan, his mother picking him up at the airport — she took one look at Dan, and rushed him to Vancouver General Hospital. Within hours of arriving at VGH, Dan was diagnosed with terminal acute myeloid leukemia. He died the next year. There’s not a day goes by I don’t think of Daniel.

On December 27th, 2016, in a meeting with Mayo Clinic surgeon, Dr. Shawn Mackenzie, I was told I conceivably had only a few hours to live, that the cancer had spread into not just my liver, but into my kidneys, gallbadder, pancreas and throughout the biliary tract. Arrangements for hospice care were made, I was told that one or more of my organs could collapse at any moment, and I should immediately make arrangements with my family involving preparation for my passing.
As you can tell, I am still here to today. Next year, I will write about my cancer journey, and all that occurred from August 2016 through March 2017. I remain under doctor’s care, have an appointment for a CT scan and MRI in December and January at the B.C. Cancer Agency — but for all intents and purposes I’m fine, although the cancer remains, and my lymph nodes are as inflamed as they were at the worst point of my diagnosis.
In the weeks and months since my miraculous recovery — when all fear and despondency has lifted, making each day a joy for me — I have asked myself, why me? Why was I spared? I have a pretty darn good idea about why I lived through those eight arduous months — for that, I have many people to thank, each of whom I will write about in the months to come.
Still, in the year after the remission of my cancer, I continued to ask the “Why me?” question. And then the answer became crystal clear to me.

I hope you will forgive me for what I am about to write, and I hope she will forgive me, too. Since March 4th of this year, only reconfirmed on March 11th, and every day since, the answer to why my health remains vibrant, my spirit strong, my energies boundless are as clear to me as the sun that shines in the sky.
As difficult as it is for you to read, I believe that I was spared — and I don’t know for how much longer — to present one candidate for Vancouver City Council to the wider world, and to dedicate all of my waking energies these past 7½ months towards ensuring her election to office. Of course, that is done now — and for that, my heart is filled with joy.
But it is not just this person about whom I know in my heart means so very much good for us, it is for all of those who voters elected to office on Saturday, October 20, 2018.
For as long as I have left on this Earth, I will dedicate my waking moments to doing what I am able to support and assist in any way I can those persons of conscience you have placed your faith in — and all those persons of whom I am aware who I know mean well for our city, and who seek — to transform our city into the city we need, a city for all of us.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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