edwards block

Only two days remain until Vancouver’s triennial civic elections. If you’re reading this from somewhere outside of Vancouver, no need to go on – I recommend you read the label of a ketchup bottle instead – unless you care to learn more about the political underbelly of this town. After all, if even Vancouverites haven’t any significant interest (last election, less than one-third of those eligible voted), why should you care? On the other hand, urban affairs nerds might find the whole exercise a lesson in how not to elect governments in their own cities.

For starters, we have here what we call an “at-large” electoral system. Contrary to how that sounds – and what the quality of some of the candidates might lead you to believe – that does not mean that one must be the subject of a police hunt in order to run. What it means is that we have no neighbourhood-based electoral districts: all voters vote for the same pool of all candidates.

Yes, it’s awkward. There are at least four different ballots (excluding special resolutions): The ballot for city councillors lists 41 candidates on which voters must place an X beside up to ten names; the ballots for Parks Board (elect 7 of 21 candidates) and School Board (elect 9 of 20 candidates) are similar. Somehow, voters are expected to be familiar with the positions of 94 separate candidates, including the twelve running for Mayor.

It’s also expensive, from a candidate’s perspective: he or she must advertise to the whole city, not just a neighbourhood. Hence, candidates who do best are generally those with the most money. The ones with the most money are, of course, those who band together in political alliances and present themselves to voters in slates.

As you can imagine, the process of deciding for whom to vote is burdensome, and the outcomes for individual voters depend on several factors. Some voters are ideologically motivated; they vote for either the right wing slate or the left wing slate. Others pick and choose from the slates, and occasionally toss a vote or two to independent candidates (though these are seldom elected). Even with the slates, it seems likely that many voters choose their candidates based on other factors that reflect their own preferences and prejudices. For instance, in many elections, a candidate with an “ethnic” sounding name will often receive fewer votes than the other candidates on his or her slate, suggesting that xenophobia may sometimes be a factor. I suspect that in some cases, candidates whose names start with a letter early in the alphabet have a bit of an edge over the Wongs and Zigarliskis, if only because the voter runs out of Xs before she gets to the Xs.

In the past, there have been resolutions to move to a much easier ward system, where everyone votes for mayor, but only vote for council candidates in their own districts. This would certainly simplify things, though undoubtedly introduce other problems. I’m of the opinion, though, that at least a partial ward system would have to be better. I suspect that many people are dissuaded from voting chiefly because of the complexity of the ballots and the impossibility of really knowing for whom one is voting.

The reality is that our city governments are usually chosen through two factors: name recognition, and what I’ll simplistically call a rich/poor divide.

In a system like this a candidate whose name is familiar to voters is probably going to have either a distinct advantage, or a distinct disadvantage, (depending, of course, on whether that familiarity engenders positive or negative emotions in the voter). However, familiarity of name can be a neutral, but still problematic, reaction. For instance, our current Mayor, Gregor Robertson, would very likely suffer from the effects of vote splitting if an independent candidate named “George Robertson” ran for mayor. (For an example of this phenomenon, see the election involving Jim Green and James Green, 2005. There was another example in the 80s that I can’t recall now). In both cases, it is likely – though unproven – that a major candidate’s opponents deliberately engaged a similarly-named nobody to confuse voters.

The rich/poor divide, more accurately referred to, perhaps, as the east/west divide, has been abating to some degree in recent years, since the increase in home ownership (if that’s what one can call being mortgaged for a leaky, plywood box in the sky) concurrent with a continuous and dramatic rise in real estate prices is making those who formerly felt poor start to feel rich, if only on paper. Taking into consideration the aforementioned factors that discourage people from voting, it turns out that our elections are generally won by whichever slate manages to motivate more of its voters to actually go out and vote. Some would say that this is true in all elections, but I think that it is more critical the lower the turnout overall.

And of course, we can’t overlook the money factor. Since there are no spending or contribution limits in elections, our governments tend to be dominated by low-level status climbers and privilege seekers willing to dance to whatever tune the bankrolling developers and real estate types call. I’m sure that some would call that overblown hyperbole, but since I was once an active member and campaign worker with the most successful of the civic parties (before I quit it in disgust), I feel at least slightly qualified to spew forth on the subject.

At any rate, choosing candidates is an exercise fraught with frustration. Who has the time to go to all candidates meetings? It’s often a waste of time anyway, since they are usually stacked with a) campaign workers trying to hog the microphones so that they can target hard questions to opponents and easy questions to their candidates; and b) lonely – and usually long-winded – people for whom and open microphone is as tempting an invitation as is a bag of heroin is to an addict.

One could stay at home and read all of the candidate websites to find out what they stand for. Unfortunately, most of them are full of empty buzzphrases intended to fill out a “Platform” page with as many meaningless words as possible. E-mailing candidates specific questions is one option, though the chances of receiving a cogent response – if a response is received at all – from a major candidate is low, especially as the official election day draws near.

As I said – who has the time?

Fortunately for my readers who also happen to be Vancouver voters (whom I’m sure make up a voting bloc of such proportions as to fill a public washroom stall), I have taken the time to attend public meetings, read websites, e-mail candidates, read Twitter feeds, judge them on the quality of their campaign photos (and the style into which those who have hair have groomed it), and for good measure incorporated my own reactionary prejudices into the mix, too. Forthwith I present you with a summary of all of the candidates. I’ll deliberately try to avoid making explicit endorsements (with one or two exceptions), as my intention is to help you make up your mind, not necessarily get you to vote in lock-step with me. However, for those who wish to know, my endorsements will follow the summaries.

AFFILIATION KEY:

NPA: Non-Partisan Association, the (generally right-leaning) traditional victor in city elections.
VIS: Vision Vancouver. The (generally left-leaning) major alternative to the NPA.
CPE: COPE, or Committee of Progressive Electors, the decidedly left party that is in a semi-abusive relationship with Vision.
RPC: Resolutionist Party Canada. Whatever that means.
NSV: If you Google NSV the first result will be “No Scalpel Vasectomy”, but scroll down to “Neigbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver”, a party created largely due to a perceived denial of community input by Vision regarding new developments, particularly in the West End. I’m struggling to decide whether I think NSV will improve the city by increasing democratic participation, or impede its necessary progress toward densification by blocking change.
VCV: Vancouver Citizen’s Voice (a one-candidate - and possibly one member – party.)
GRN: Green Party. Sort of. The candidates (one Council, one School, one Parks) are Green, but they seem to be underplaying this label this election.
RICH: Rent is Crazy High. A couple of young people who feel – justifiably, I’d say – under-represented by the developer-funded major parties.

MAYOR:

[Mayoral candidate statements on city website].

Anton, Suzanne    NPA: Anton has been a councillor for two terms and, let’s be frank, is only the NPA’s mayoral nominee because no one else wanted the job. Known as a bit of an opportunistic flip-flopper (which her team tries to promote as “flexibility”), I have seen no indication that she has any real comprehension of any world except her own privileged, west-side one. She’s obviously not stupid, but it seems she hasn’t yet broken down the silver-spoon barrier that would enable her to be a mayor for everyone. Think Phillip Owen in a dress. Like Owen, she might suddenly come to some kind of an understanding of the other side of town once she’s been defeated at politics, but judging by her opportunistic grandstanding on bike lanes and Occupy Vancouver, she’s not mayoral material yet.

Buday , Golok Zoltan    IND: Possibly the candidate with the worst website. Has some valid concerns and is obviously thinking about issues, but not mayoral material.

Caissy, Menard    RPC: I can’t tell if the text on his cryptically-nested collection of webpages is campaign material, punk band lyrics, or both. Poor literacy level not encouraging.

Cooke, Lloyd Alan    IND: Too little information to judge positively.

Dubgee    IND: East Van musician. This guy sounds kind of interesting, though I wouldn’t necessarily say mayor material. He’s exactly the kind of person Suzanne Anton ought to spend some time getting to know a little. Unfortunately, she’d probably call the SWAT team if he ever came near her.

Helten, Randy    NSV: Although I haven’t yet convinced myself that he’s not a NIMBY candidate, this guy is on my maybe list. Seems to have more interest in democratic participation than other candidates, and that’s a big plus.

Lawrance, Robin    IND: The only candidate who has his eyes closed in his campaign photo. I hope he just blinked and isn’t deceased. At any rate, I’m not sure Vancouver needs a mayor that can’t take TWO digital pictures and pick the best. (Mind you, maybe he did…) No website, so what he stands for is unknown, but he gets points for confidence.

McGuire, Gerry    VCV: Has some good ideas, but can’t really be considered a serious candidate. Might be a good place to park your mayoral vote if you really can’t stand anyone else running.

Paquette, Victor B.     IND: Opposed to parking meters. Wants to return parks to the people by filling them with parked cars. Bzzzzz – Next!

Pelletier, Samuel    IND: Earnest young man with a highly sensible platform that is possibly the clearest and most literate of any of the 94 candidates. Blurry campaign photo makes him look a bit like Frankenstein. May have a future – should perhaps start with more modest goals.

Robertson, Gregor    VIS: Ah, Gregor. “The Juiceman”, as he is derisively known by rightist critics. There’s nothing the right doesn’t object to more than success, and Robertson seems to have some of that. Built a big business. Was born with good looks. People on the west side vote for him. Is building infrastructure for the city’s beleaguered bike riders. And yet… I still find it hard to get excited about him. Maybe because he seems a little too friendly with developers, or perhaps because he gushed enthusiastically about Gordon Campbell right before the provincial election. He seems a bit like a tactician most interested in whatever will improve his own political successes in the future. On the other hand, maybe that’s just good politics.

Zimmerman, Darrell “Saxmaniac”    IND: Hard to take seriously a candidate whose nomination form consists of “No profile provided. No contact information provided. No photo provided.” (and whose list of nominators looks like he passed the form around at the legion where a bunch of drunks scrawled names on it, many of them illegible).

COUNCIL:

[Link to all Council candidate statements on city website].

AFFLECK, George    NPA: I saw this guy at an all-candidates meeting and thought he sounded pretty reasonable and intelligent, except for some odd comment about how we need super-charged Chinese buses on Broadway, and I left the meeting thinking he might be worth a vote. However, I went and looked at his website, and it has to be the most content-deprived site I’ve seen. He says almost nothing, and taking that into consideration with his Twitter feed I must conclude that he’s either wilfully mute or simply vacuous. Perhaps his candidacy is simply a roll of the dice of fortune to see what happens, or maybe he’s building name recognition for a future run. Reminds me a bit of Gordon Campbell when he first ran for alderman in 1984 – and he was mayor two years later.

ALM, Kelly    IND: Has two websites, both the same, except the .com version is in a giant font (for the visually impaired?) and contains a bizarre chart that looks like a route map for Cathay Pacific. Seems a bit pro-car, and anyway, he’s a real estate agent, a career that rates lower in my books than school-yard pusher.

AQUINO, RJ    CPE: Seems like a nice enough guy, and seems potentially competent. Like most of COPE he has a lot to say about what isn’t working, but is a little short on what can (realistically) be done about it, such as the cost of housing.

BALL, Elizabeth    NPA: Website pretty much says what she’s done in the past (personally), not what she wants to do in the future (as a councillor). The most informative statement her site makes is “Elizabeth would like to continue her work and generate more revenue for Vancouver through arts, culture and heritage initiatives as well as improve our community by supporting children and working towards creating safer streets”, which really doesn’t say much at all. I fear she’s just a little too much of Anton’s world. She’s big on arts and culture, but I suspect her definitions of those are on the corporatey high-brow side.

BENSON, Nicole    NSV: Seems pretty good, though I haven’t heard her speak, except in a video intro. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the NSV candidates for their interests in neighbourhood consultation, transparency, and a reduction of blank cheques and subsidies to developers, but I’m also leery of NIMBYism and a rejection of the sort of densification that will be required, inevitably.

BICKERTON, Sean    NPA: I put Bickerton on my “maybe” list right off the bat mainly due to his opposition to expanded gambling in the city, though he’s not yet assured of moving up. I have some concerns about his “Safe Streets” initiative, which kindles an unfortunate memory of Lorne Mayencourt. I found his safe streets stuff to be rather vague about specifics and disproportionately targeted to the “crimes” being committed by marginal or minority groups, and without any hints about how he plans to fund his initiatives, since he’s running with a party that’s opposed to new taxes. How (or if) he responds to my questions will depend on whether he gets a vote. He got extra points for having the most detailed and informative website generally (though it still could have more meat).

CARANGI, Joe    NPA: Seems to have a lot of spunk, and as is well known, I like spunk. However, he likes to spew a lot of anti-bike twaddle, so low on my list.

CARR, Adriane    GRN: I’m pre-disposed to voting Green, so Adriane was on my ‘likely’ list early on, though not without reservations. I’d like her to be a little more assertive in presenting her opinions. She’s run for office seemingly countless times and has great name recognition. If she can’t get a seat on council this time, in a race that’s almost all about name recognition, it might be time to pack it in, or start getting a little more aggressive about her campaign style.

CHARKO, Ken    NPA: Another successful businessman who thinks that’s qualification enough to be a councillor. At least, that’s all I get from his website. Seems to be of the anti-bike variety, not uncommon in the NPA. I’m grateful to him for making his business known so that I can avoid giving him my money in future by choosing somewhere other than the Dunbar to watch films.

COPELAND, Cord “Ted”    IND: Types in all-caps, doesn’t know how to spell “independent”, no website. I’m not motivated.

DEAL, Heather    VIS: I don’t really understand why Deal seems to be unpopular with the right wing ranters to a degree that seems out of proportion to other Visioners. She doesn’t strike me as someone who is a rabid ideologue. On the other hand, I’m not sure that she stands out particularly, either. Undecided.

DHARNI, Michael Singh    IND: Candidacy seems to be all about the price of parking on city streets as far as I can see. Perhaps there’s more, but since he’s another independent council candidate without a website, who knows? Hellooooo? Does the 21^st century ring a bell? Even a child can set up a website on WordPress. For free.

FOX, Amy “Evil Genius”    IND: Her website has only a video, and I don’t do video when a paragraph will work just fine (the canny among you will have noticed the hypocrisy of that statement after what I said about Dharni). Appears as a joke candidate, but on the other hand, the candidate statement on her nomination form says far more in 140 words than most other candidates could apparently say in 140 pages. Maybe we should think beyond the necktie-and-fake-smile crowd and give her a chance.

FRASER, Grant    IND: He says that he has “had to wait for as many as 16 full trains at the Broadway SkyTrain station during the morning rush hour”. I would imagine that service could be improved, but I suspect that either he can’t count or he’s simply full of shit. Has provided nothing else to go on, let alone anything that makes me want to vote for him.

GAROSSINO, Sandy    IND: An early favourite. I like her boldness, her style, her enthusiasm, her ability to challenge and criticise things that deserve it while remaining positive. She started out anti-casino, and has a lot of vision (as opposed to Vision, of course) and the ability to communicate well. Seems able to work with many kinds of people. Should go far, if she can beat the “independent” odds. Might even make a good mayor. Deserves your vote – she’s almost certain to get mine.

GILL, Lauren     RICH:Likely to be viewed as a frivolous young idealist, and perhaps she should be, for her platform is not extensive. On the other hand, it’s no less extensive than some major party candidates who will be more readily accepted. Who’s to say she’s not just as worthy?

GREGSON, Ian    DEG: The De-growth candidates, of which Gregson is one, have an uphill battle, but they are initiating important conversations that tend to be stifled and pilloried quickly by those with competing vested interests. Having some of them on council along with a variety of other views would make for a more interesting city.

JANG, Kerry    VIS: Jang’s website suggests that he’s thinking about important things and suggesting progressive, creative solutions, though the website content also appears a bit dated. I’d like to know how he actually voted on some of the things that came before council.

KERCHUM, Marie    NSV: Doesn’t have her own website, and her Twitter account contains only 10 tweets, several of which are messages to new followers that say “Hope to give you good reason to follow me.” They’re probably still waiting. Rather unimpressive video interview on NSV site.

KLASSEN, Mike    NPA: His website extols all his virtues, but says nothing about what he wants to do. There’s simply a link to the NPA Platform which, if clicked, results in a “page not found” message that says “This is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?” Runs the citycaucus.com “news” site, which really seems an organ for abusing political opponents and promoting… Mike Klassen! Closely linked to Gordon Campbell and Colin “HST” Hansen, which is really all I really need to know.

LAMARCHE, Jason    NPA: Well, let’s put aside the fact that I never vote for anyone who poses for a campaign photo with his dog, especially when the dog is wearing a golf shirt. The whole sexist “date matrix” thing, along with some unfortunate sexist web dictionary entries that he swears he didn’t write (but that no one believes he didn’t) pretty much finishes him off for me. For gory details, read Jeff Lee’s Sun blog (where you can also view the stupid pet trick).

LOUIE, Raymond    VIS: Has no (known) personal campaign website, and there’s a Twitter account that might be his (@ClrLouie – but has never been used to tweet). I’d like to know that he has more in mind than simply toeing the party line.

LOUIS, Tim    CPE: Louis is an interesting character. Unlike many candidates, he’s prepared to take stands, even if unpopular, and I respect that. Unfortunately, he’s a bit of a polarising figure and I don’t think ideal council material, though he’s been a councillor before. He reportedly has a woodcut of Che Guevera hanging on the back of his wheelchair, and I once saw him at a showing of the movie “Fidel” (not at the Dunbar, thank the gods) wearing a bright red “Che” shirt. Now, I’m willing to acknowledge that Cuba perhaps does a few things better, or more humanely, than we do, and perhaps armed conflict was the only real way to get rid of the (U.S. backed) mafia running Cuba way back when, but I still can’t accept that a military dictatorship is a model from which to work here and now. I wonder, if Tim were able to hold a gun, would he be campaigning for votes or running through the woods picking off enemies?

MARTIN, Terry    NSV: Not much I can say that I can’t say about the other NSV candidates.

MASSON, Chris    DEG: Another De-growth candidate. They haven’t really distinguished themselves much, so whatever I said about the previous one likely holds for this one.

MAXWELL N BUR, RH    IND: Probably a nice guy with good intentions, but not likely to attract significant attention.

MCCREERY, Bill    NPA: I don’t care what his website says. I don’t care what he tweets. He lives in Richmond. Not even just across the river, but practically in Steveston. If I were in charge, a candidate would have to actually live in the city to govern it. I suggest he run for Richmond council. Next!

MEGGS, Geoff    VIS: I think Meggs is a pretty smart guy, and obviously pays a lot of attention to the city’s business. I approve of his support for bike infrastructure, and am tentatively in favour of reconsidering the future of the viaducts. However, he does seem to have a bit of a reputation as arrogant, and may have a few enemies. I think I saw a few in suits at the transportation meeting trying to nail him on something about attendance, but he shot them down easily. I’m not sure that I can trust him to stand up to developers, but he’s tough and competent otherwise.

MURPHY, Elizabeth    NSV: Not much I can say that I can’t say about the other NSV candidates. Saw her at the transport meeting – a mediocre speaker, likely due to inexperience. I’m sure she’d get better.

NGUYEN, Bang    IND: Seems to be hedging his bets by running for both Council and School board at the same time. Claims you “can’t make every single person happy”, but then tries to do that by saying “I will not remove the bike lanes but will not add to them as well.”

NGUYEN, Marc Tan    IND: As they used to say in high school annual write ups of the nerdy, awkward, virtually unknown students: “Best of luck in your future endeavours”.

ORSER, Rick    IND: A curious candidate. Put together a pretty thorough, if slightly odd website. Not sure what to make of him.

REIMER, Andrea    VIS: I like Andrea. She seems sincere, and has Green roots. Like Jang, I’d like to know how she voted on issues in council, especially related to development, but seems a good councillor.

SHAW, Chris    DEG: Shaw was an outspoken critic of how the olympics affected Vancouver, and I appreciated his tempered, reasoned voice. A smart guy who should perhaps be given a chance to participate in government.

SPIRES, Aaron    RICH: Another voice that deserves a little more attention than we generally provide.

STEVENSON, Tim    VIS: I once stepped into an elevator containing Stevenson and greeted him with a slightly unenthusiastic “Well, well. It’s our MLA”. He (inexplicably) blurted out his admiration for then-boss Glen Clark, and beamed proudly. When in return I offered a critical comment about NDP forest policy, he clammed up. I don’t know if it’s justified, but I find him a bit of an Elwood Veitch-like pleaser of people with power.

TANG, Tony    VIS: Another candidate who says little more than that he has a wife and a dog. Some people sure don’t do much work to earn votes.

WENDYTHIRTEEN    IND: Dear Tony Tang: Please see WendyThirteen’s website for an example of how to tell voters what you think you might like to do if elected. No need, however, to mimic her hairstyle – you’d undoubtedly frighten Penny Ballem.

WONG, Francis    NPA: Cute as a button, but not much to say beyond the party-line basics.

WOODSWORTH, Ellen    CPE: Years ago, I went to a few demonstrations that inevitably featured Ellen speaking into a bullhorn. I usually didn’t stay too long, as I’m not keen on bullhorn talk generally, and listening to a left-wing manifesto being read doesn’t make it more appealing. Mind you, right-wing manifestos are no more exciting, but they sound a lot better through expensive audio systems that only the right-wingers can afford. Anyway, yes, Ellen is of the old-school Rankin-style leftist that used to dominate council. I don’t necessarily agree with all of her positions, but she’s pretty hard working and earnest and is trying to is make Vancouver better for all. Maybe I wouldn’t be keen to have ten of her on council, but I think it’s pretty important that there’s at least one.

YUEN, Bill    NPA: “Bill Yuen is a professional engineer, who specializes in process optimization and performance improv….”. Zzzzzzzz…. Huh? Oh yeah. We’re down to the last council candidate. Sorry about being at the end of the ballot, Bill. Tough break. You ought to campaign for a randomly scrambled ballot. Anyway, as far as I can tell, Bill seems to be pretty involved in community stuff. If he hasn’t made it all up, and you’re inclined to vote for an NPA candidate, he’s probably a decent choice.

Ooo000ooo

Well, there you go. My brief summary of the election took eight pages, and I haven’t even gotten to the School Board or Parks Board candidates. You see why we need a ward system, already? Perhaps I’ll get to the rest before Saturday. If not, best of luck. I’ll need it too.

If you’d like my working spreadsheet, which contains all the candidates along with (if known/relevant) their party’s website links, personal website links, and Twitter feed links, feel free to view it here.

Update – Nov 19 @ 16:58h:

Late circumstances have caused me to drop the three NPA candidates that I had on my list: 1) The offensive chicken stunt held near city hall yesterday; 2) Bickerton’s failure to acknowledge, let alone reply to, my e-mail; 3) The reports that the NPA had hired lawyers to prevent identification- and home-deprived people in the DTES from voting.Best of luck to the rest of the party and independent candidates that I selected!

 

 

It’s impossible to experience my immediate physical location in precisely the same way in which I experienced it as a barely pubescent youth so many years ago. Nevertheless, as I sit at an upper-level table in the W2 Media Café I sense many ghosts unrelated to the Halloween enthusiasts who occasionally wander through in costume. In this physical space once again, memories flood back of those days in the 1970s, when I was beginning to come of age and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community (often DTES in current written reference) was beginning a sharp decline.

The W2 Media Café sits in the south-east corner of what was once a department store. It’s more than just a café, though it is the café that makes up the “storefront”. It serves good food and employs DTES residents. But it also provides, on three levels, community meeting space, broadcasting facilities, office and desk space, training programs and workshops (particularly in media-related activities), public washrooms out of which security won’t throw non-spenders, and provides other services as well. In other words, it’s a sort of high-tech community centre that’s more about providing access to modern cultural and political communication tools to everyone, including those who live in the the area but may not enjoy the privileges that allow them to be full civic participants. The social centre of the new complex, into which the café and other operations face, is an atrium that contains a basketball court as well as Stan Douglas’s large mural Abbott & Cordova that depicts the Gastown Riot of 1971.

The department store, of course, was Woodward’s. In its day Woodward’s, with its big, revolving ‘W’ on the roof, was a landmark and bit of a community centre itself. It was the dominant economic anchor of the community when I was young, particularly after the other major department store, Eaton’s, moved uptown to the new Pacific Centre mall, a tragic failure of urban planning that has been sucking the life out downtown Vancouver’s streets ever since (including the streets beneath which it sits).

As a child I spent a good deal of time at Woodward’s, for my only paternal aunt, Peggy, was a sales clerk at the store. I was born in Vancouver, but I’d been taken to the prairies when I was quite young and I usually spent only my summer holidays in Vancouver. Visits to see Peggy at Woodward’s were common, and often during those visits I travelled downtown to Woodward’s by myself. I used to catch the BC Hydro trolley bus on Fraser, near 37^th, adjacent to the Mountainview Cemetary. Back then, the buses were of the old, brillo style, and on rainy days were musty and steaming as they rattled along with a seemingly interminable series of stops and starts.

The Fraser bus stopped right outside Woodward’s, on Hastings just past Abbott. As I remember it, the entrance to the store was on Abbott, and as I rounded the corner I always saw the same plump, upper middle-aged woman in a colourful flowing dress and a hat. She sat on a wooden box against the building’s granite cornerstone, sang or chanted softly, and held out small religious tracts to any passer-by who felt called to take one, her apparently sightless eyes focussed somewhere above my head.

Often I took one of her tracts, though I had no more than a passing interest in their contents. It was she about which I was curious. Part of it was racial: I had never known any black people, except through the unreal filter of a television, but there was something else that drew my interest, and I’m not sure that I know today what that was any more clearly than I did then. Perhaps I wanted to know who she was, where she lived, and what she thought. Perhaps I just wanted to sit down beside her and listen to her sing. I was too cowardly for that, however, and instead, as I sat on the bus later, I read her tract and then left it on the seat for someone else.

Once inside the store, I sought out my aunt, who worked in Men’s Undergarments (or in later years, Purses and Wallets). She was usually busy with a customer, so I would hang around in the periphery, absent mindedly fondling underpants until she noticed me. Once free, she told me what time her break was and then I went off to explore until then. If her break wasn’t too far off, I would hang around the store, browsing records, or stereos, or sometimes furniture. Undoubtedly I was tailed by store detectives on more than one occasion.

In the 70s there were plenty of down-and-out and addicted people living in the area. I was wary, and cautious of danger, but I never felt particularly afraid wandering through the neighbourhood, and indeed, I felt far more in danger on the grounds of my own middle school in suburban Winnipeg than in Vancouver’s skid row. In a way, my peripheral experience of the Downtown Eastside probably contributed to my future expectations of what a big city should be, and I loved Vancouver – in small part – for the rough edginess of its inner city.

Of course, that was the 70s. I was somewhat naïve and the Downtown Eastside would deteriorate considerably in later years – due partly, in my opinion, to government policies that, instead of treating suburban social problems in situ, encouraged addicts and the criminals that prey on them to gather in the neighbourhood in a climate of virtual lawlessness, left largely alone as long as they stayed out of richer neighbourhoods.

If I was meeting my aunt for her coffee break, we usually went to the lunch counter in the basement of Woodward’s, near the entrance to the store’s grocery department known as “The Food Floor”. The lunch counter was a long horseshoe-shaped, chrome-and-formica counter behind which waitresses walked back and forth, pouring coffee from glass pots and pulling pencils from behind their ears to scratch orders on slips of paper that they would rip from their pads and stick to a long coil for the cooks to retrieve. I always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with a pickle, crinkle-cut fries, and a milkshake, a flavour combination that still makes me salivate when I think of it today (though one I tend to avoid ordering).

Other days, I met my aunt for her lunch or dinner break, and we left the store to eat, sometimes with her co-workers, at a nearby restaurant. Most memorable was a few doors up Hastings (or was it across the street?), at the White Lunch Restaurant. Later I would learn that the White Lunch had once been a chain of diners in Vancouver that was reputedly so named because of the racist laws and culture of the day, particularly the anti-Asian laws in various forms. In the 70s, however, the White Lunch had a diverse clientèle that included Caucasian, First Nations, and Asian diners, and a healthy socio-economic mix, too. Woodward’s clerks, business people, hippies, and down-and-outers all occupied booths and counter stools without noticeable rancour or judgement.

Sometimes I would stay downtown until my aunt finished work and we would go out for dinner, or shopping, and later ride home on the bus to her house. Other times, I caught the Fraser bus on my own. The returning bus passed behind Woodward’s, on Cordova Street beneath the walkway to the Woodward’s Parkade. At the corner of Cordova and Abbott an older man with an accent (Italian? Portuguese?) sat, surrounded in a hut seemingly built of newspapers and magazines so that only his face and hands were visible. He shouted out to rush hour commuters major headlines and implored them to get their news. Occasionally I bought a newspaper, not so much because I wanted to read it (it was difficult to read the large broadsheets of the day on a crowded bus), but because I felt so big city buying a paper from such a vendor. Sometimes I was downtown late enough to see the booth after the vendor had gone home, when all that remained was a small plywood shack, undressed and padlocked, its daytime life extinguished.

After finally closing in 1993, Woodward’s sat empty for many years. Most of the buildings that comprised Woodward’s were demolished in 2006, but not before an uprising by local residents and activists, who occupied the original building for a week during the infamous Woodward’s Squat before being evicted by police. A subsequent tent city that emerged, and lasted for three months, shamed the city into a more progressive and community-focussed development plan, rather than allow the site to simply be turned over to land speculators, saving us, for now, from another soulless Coal Harbour.

Today, only the exterior of the remaining Woodward’s building is original – probably just the upper portions of the east and south walls. The interior is all new concrete and glass, industrial looking, clean. Behind the granite cornerstone sits a bank. The plywood newsstand on Cordova is long gone, and in its corner sits a shiny convenience store called “Express News”. The Woodward’s Food Floor is back, sort of, in the form of Nester’s, which is owned by Buy-Low Foods, which is owned by Jim Pattison. The rest of the complex is occupied by a combination of office space, condos, social housing, and the unfortunately-named ‘Goldcorp Centre for the Arts’, which is also the site of SFU’s contemporary arts programs.

I remember when I felt a youthful excitement about Vancouver, inner cities in general, and about my own prospects. In Winnipeg I watched Woody Allen films and – in comparison to my home – imagined that his Manhattan existed, on a smaller but growing scale, in my Vancouver. Thirty years on, I feel somewhat betrayed, for things have moved in a much different direction than I’d hoped. The town has too much money and too many people who seem willing to welcome increasing blandness and sterility. This is not unique to Vancouver, of course, but I feel the pain of it especially acutely here in my home town.

I’d thought I’d lost for good that youthful feeling of excitement. I had. But I got it back, just a little bit – I got it back this afternoon. Despite the extent of the changes in it, being back in this building, on this streetcorner, is an invigorating experience. I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the Visions of the Antons don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy town.

Anyway, we’ll always have Woodward’s.

 

PS: Don’t forget to vote in Vancouver’s election November 19.

 

A couple of months ago I bought Charles Demers’ most recent book, Vancouver Special, and I’ve just started reading it. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press and a finalist for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, the book is a collection of essays about Vancouver, mostly centred around its neighbourhoods and cultures, accompanied by some great photographs by Emmanuel Buenviaje. On Demers’ website, he calls the book “a love letter to the city”, though I expect it will not be a love letter in the style of, say, a romantic poet, all gushing uncritically about how great is one’s lover, etc. etc. Besides an author, Demers is a comedian as well as an activist, the latter being more of the left wing bent, if one must be simplistic enough to assign an ideologically-based label. Perhaps I’ll just say that he’s not of the right-wing, chamber-of-commerce-booster bent and leave it at that. At any rate, I expect a love letter well-chocked with irreverence.

Though I don’t yet know precisely what Demers has written (I have heard him read short excerpts in public appearances), I feel like it is probably a book that I would have liked to have written myself. There are multiple reasons why I haven’t, of course, not least of which is that my affection for the city has been dwindling in more or less direct proportion to the city’s growth. For me to have written a love letter to Vancouver in recent years (without relying heavily on irony) I likely would have had to ingest a strong cocktail of psychiatric medications and have done the actual writing from somewhere like Bismarck, North Dakota, where I couldn’t help but recall the assumed charms of the city of my birth, if only based on comparison.

Until this book came out, I had been contemplating a series of blog entries with the working titles of “The Ten Best Things” and “The Ten Worst Things”, about Vancouver, along with accompanying photographs. It wasn’t my objective to compile a simple set of lists, but to actually write essays about the items on the lists, however tenuously. There have been stumbling blocks, though. The “worst” list hasn’t been too difficult. The challenge there has been in paring the list down to a mere ten. It’s the “best” list I’ve been stuck on. Maybe I’m not thinking creatively enough, but I seem to be stuck at three (and one of them is, technically, not even an official part of Vancouver proper).

Fortunately, Demers has done me the favour of rescuing me from this seemingly doomed plan. Reading his book may not relieve me of my desire to write about Vancouver – it may not even relieve me of the desire to write about it derisively – but I have a feeling that it may inspire me. I don’t think it will inspire me to run around town in a Remax jacket gushing with seemingly lobotomised zeal about sports arenas, strip malls, or shitty t-shirt merchants in Gastown (the latter of which I have heard city councillor Suzanne Anton point to as a desirable example of the kind of urban funkiness to which we should aspire. What the fuck is she smoking?).

No, rather, I think that Demers might inspire me to something higher, nobler, more charitable. “Ten Best and Worst” sounds so black and white, so simplistic, so Lettermanesque. Therefore, I have set a new objective for the coming summer. I will undertake to look at Vancouver through new eyes. I will try to see this city through the eyes of the tourist that I often wish I was, as though I were visiting the city for the first time. I’ll visit Vancouver with the sort of vision that I once experienced when visiting Toronto, or London, or Prague, Berlin, Krakow, Salzburg. Of course, I’ll never be able to “visit” Vancouver completely devoid of preconceptions, but I didn’t go to any of those other cities without some sort of expectations either. The difference, perhaps, is that I went to them with at least some willingness to look with open eyes. I was looking for the unknown, the unexpected. I was looking for adventure, and often found it. In Vancouver, I’ve fallen into the lazy habit of focussing on what I already know and despise.

So this is my mission between now and the end of August: to be an inexperienced visitor in my own city. At least twice a month, I will put a tourist map in my pocket, hang a camera around my neck, consult Lonely Planet Vancouver, and then set out to see what this city is all about, looking at every intersection, every building, every puke encrusted alley, as if I’d never seen them before.

Don’t get me wrong – I have no intention of faking an arrival at the airport and then spending time in the same tourist traps that exist identically in every large city in North America. I doubt I’ll set foot in a mall the whole time. But I’ll visit the neighbourhoods slowly, casually, alertly, virginally, looking for the unique, the humour, the sad, the pathetic, the beautiful. I just hope I don’t get taken for an elderly cruise ship passenger and get mugged.

One Last Rant Before I Go All Touristy

Before I head out on this mission, I must make one last habitual gripe about Vancouver, perhaps just to clear the gullet before I take a vacation from my adored scepticism for this town.

I’m sitting in the Vancouver Public Library. It’s a building that I feel like I’d have a hard time appreciating as a tourist. I can’t imagine stepping off of the stupid imitation San Francisco streetcar (a crappy open-air bus painted red with a streetcar bell mounted on it – attention city boosters: this sort of imitation is the sincerest form of provincialism) onto Homer Street and exclaiming “Oh! What a lovely example of Roman architecture. Take my picture, Blanche!”.

I remember, somewhat fondly, the old Vancouver Public Library on Burrard Street. It was turned into a record store when the new Coastal Colosseum was opened. Yes, it was dark, dank, and smelly. Yes, the elevator was slow and jerky so most people used the convenient and central stairwell. Yes, there was limited space for books so sometimes if you wanted a particular title you’d have to fill out a slip and wait while the librarian went to the basement to retrieve it for you. On the other hand, one could easily get a blowjob in the basement washroom while waiting for the title in question.

Then the Colosseum opened. The designers of the place must have been a little drunk during the planning sessions. The elevators are slow and the stairwells are often locked, so using the the escalators is best, but they were installed so that on every floor you have to walk in a circle to get to the next escalator, forcing patrons to walk through departments in which they are not interested. How did that get approved? Even The Bay doesn’t make customers walk through the Underwear department to get to the escalator to Hats and Wallets. Then there are the washrooms. Tiny. I can’t speak for the women’s, but the men’s has one stall and two urinals. The urinals have a nice privacy plate between them so that one doesn’t accidentally glimpse someone else’s penis, but the urinals are jammed into a corner and are mounted so close together that you practically have to stand on the next guy’s foot to take a leak. If he shakes too hard you have to wipe your shoe off on the way out. And, if the guy in the corner finishes first he has to wait for the other guy to finish before he can back out, for the sink counter is so close behind that there’s no room to squeeze through without an accidental goosing. The washrooms are wheelchair accessible, but I suspect that a wheelchair user might have to back his chair in or risk getting stuck trying to turn around.

In a big new building, you might think that they cramped up the washrooms to ensure room for books, but no. They put in expandable shelves. Now, if you want a particular title, you have to fill out a slip and wait while the librarian operates the moving shelves and retrieves it for you.

There are some seemingly great additions to the library. One is workstations with light and power for laptops. Another is private meeting rooms that can be booked for half hour blocks, but can’t be booked in advance, so it’s pretty easy to get one when you need it. There are two on each floor. Unfortunately, they put a wall around them, but no ceiling, so the other library patrons are forced to listen to all the babble and laughter that takes place in these meetings.

The biggest irritation about working in the library, though, has little to do with the building. It’s the other clients. In my day, if you tried to whisper to someone, the librarian would come by and shush you. Now, you have to listen to barely concealed cellphone conversations. Most – but not all – users have the decency to put their phones on silent, or vibrate. But then they answer them. And talk! Generally, few users can be found in the stacks looking for books these days. Rather, the stacks are full of people talking on cellphones.

Recently, I was here working and my deskmate, a young woman, had her cellphone sitting on the desk. About every two minutes it would vibrate, rattling on the desk until she picked it up. She would reply to a text message and put it down again. Then one time it vibrated and she answered an incoming call. She sat there gabbing into it until I blurted out, quite a bit more loudly than I’d intended, “Could you possibly be more annoying?” Sensing hostility, she shortly thereafter packed up and left, much to my relief.

Today, I have a much quieter deskmate. Here he is:

I don’t mind sleepers, unless they’re snoring (as they sometimes do). But check out this guy’s electrical draw. He’s got three devices plugged into two splitters, and none of them are foreign converters. The laptop and cellphone are charging away, but I’m not sure what the third device is, for it’s hidden in his hat. Judging by the curly power cord, though – not to mention his five o’clock shadow – my guess is that he’s got an electric shaver hidden under that scarf. Based on my previous experiences here, I won’t be at all surprised if at some point he pulls it out and starts shaving. On past visits, I’ve had deskmates pick their noses, pop their zits, apply makeup, and clip their fingernails quite unselfconsciously. Oddly, this sort of thing is apparently acceptable but getting a blowjob in the privacy of the washroom is frowned upon.

On the other hand, the place does have its good points. It has loads of natural lighting and it has a fairly neutral smell. What else does a 21st century library need?

Okay, I’m done ranting. Off I go to touristville. Stay tuned.